Crumple
by MissiAmphetamine
Summary: As the war rages on two years post-'final battle', Hermione is captured by the other side and Malfoy is the only hope she has of surviving. ["Granger?" His voice is urgent, but she just sits there and breathes for a moment, feeling violated and still radiating pain, her eyes staring blindly at the cell wall opposite her, her brain frozen in what she thinks dully might be shock.]
1. Part One

**Disclaimer: This is JK Rowling's 'verse, I'm just playing in it.**

**Author's Note:** There is content throughout this fic that could possibly be triggering, including violence and sexual assault. It deserves a hard M-rating in my opinion.

Essentially the premise of this fic is about the trope of Draco being a (not-necessarily loyal) Death Eater who for some reason has to sexually assault/rape Hermione in order to protect her shortly after they first meet in the story. Generally I find this trope extremely squicky. I'm capable of forgiving a lot of the characters thanks to extreme circumstances; there are some things, however, that cross the point of no redemption for me.

I especially don't like it when Draco is doing it unnecessarily because he 'loves' her; when he could reduce the trauma by telling Hermione he's on her side without it being too much extra risk but doesn't; when he 'makes' her enjoy it physically and/or mentally; and when their romantic relationship starts partially thanks to the rape, because she likes it/grows to like it/develops Stockholm Syndrome. What can I say; I'm picky.

But, is it possible to write a fic that involves a sexual assault/rape shortly after they first meet in order to protect her, that doesn't taint the relationship that follows between them as per my standards? I'm sure it is, and I'm sure they've already been written, but this is my perspective on it.

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><p><strong>Edit:<strong> As of the **28th of April 2015**, I have made major changes to this fic, thanks to constructive criticism by a reader. Scenes have been added, and the tone and content of many existing scenes have been altered or expanded upon. I hope that such alterations give a better picture of the dynamic between Draco and Hermione, which previously was not illustrated in a great deal of detail because I was trying to keep this fic short. However, the subject material does not lend itself to brevity, it seems - and in order to make a proper go of achieving what I set out to achieve, I have had to make some changes. I _recommend_ skimming back through the fic from the beginning before reading on, but doing so is not _necessary_. I hope you find the changes I've made to be positive ones!

Liss xx

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><p><span><strong>Part One<strong>

"Crumple-horned Snorkack."

The code words are whispered hot in Hermione's ear, and her eyes fly as wide as they can with the bruises and the swelling that disfigure her face, thanks to her enthusiastic welcome to the dungeons. Her heart stutters in her chest and she forces herself not to turn around and meet the eyes of the man who had _known the code_. She doesn't want to draw attention, just in case they are being watched. He must be an informant – a snitch, or someone sympathetic to the Order's goals, but not a member, not a double agent, just a _possible source of information_, as Remus put it. Because that is who the code is meant to identify – someone who _maybe_ she can trust, someone who might be able to help her, _somehow_.

Hermione swallows hard, throat raw and dry as she stares across the dark, torch-lit cell at the brutalised, skeletal prisoners, who are seemingly catatonic, their clothing rags and their flesh sore-ridden. The cells are crowded, but only women occupy this section of the dungeons. Adrenaline sets a fire in her veins and her bruised fingertips flex, scraping on the dank dungeon stones, sharp pains running up her bones and flesh on the fingers that have bloodied wounds where her nails once sat. She had thought she was as good as dead, when they took her, at least a day ago now. Stripped her of her wand and beat her, until blackness had reached up through the pain and swallowed her whole. She had woken here to the sounds of screams echoing from elsewhere in the dungeons.

And now – now she has the barest spark of _hope_.

"_You don't exist_." She murmurs the counter sign, words barely intelligible through her split, swollen lips. Something touches her hair then – fingers reaching through the bars, curling hard in the wild, dirty strands and exerting enough pressure to hold her there, sitting on the damp, moss-slick stones with her upper body slumped to the bars. She stays very still and does not fight – it must be to fool someone walking past nearby, she tells herself, that dangerous grip on her hair. And even if it is not, what exactly can she do about it? She is helpless, utterly and completely, and the man whose fingers twine in her hair is currently her only hope of getting a message out to the Order.

Unless the enemy have tortured the codes out of another captured Order member, and this is all just a trick. She feels ill, fear threading through her as the pull on her scalp increases, creating sharp little stabbing tugs of pain. She whimpers, and squirms on the floor involuntarily. The man speaks at her ear again, muffled, his breath falling over her ear and jaw in hot puffs.

"There's a Snatcher watching us. I – I'm sorry, about this," he says, fast and blurred, voice low, and his tone is _angry_ and ashamed in a way that makes Hermione even more afraid than she already is. "_So sorry_."

She barely has time to process what he has actually said, before a scream breaks her lips. Her hands shove uselessly at the dungeon floor and try to push her _up _as the man's hand wrenches upwards on her hair, tearing it out at the roots and making tears flood her eyes. Her bare feet can't get purchase on the mossy stones and she scrabbles helplessly, initial screams falling to wretched animalistic moans and cries, her hands flailing and shoving at the ground, back arching and her _scalp is on fire._

A hand cages her breast then as she arches and twists, and shock slams through her, revulsion, horror. Those feelings are quickly chased down by hot agony as the hand _squeezes _through her shirt, until it feels like her whole breast is a mass of molten metal on her chest. Hermione forgets that this man is apparently here to help her, because he is _hurting_ her and it _hurts_ and it _hurts_, and she screams and thrashes and weeps and _begs _in a horrible choking slew of pleading. She struggles and tries to escape the pain, but his hand on her breast and in her hair hold her still, and she is weak – beaten and dehydrated and half-starved. And he is not. He is strong and he is _hurting_ her.

His mouth is at her ear.

"_I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry_," he says, like some sick game, over and over in a desperate mutter, and Hermione is only half-aware of what he says. Lost in the pain and the terror and the humiliation, most of it sounds like a mockery, and just makes her sob and shake harder. "Just – just a little longer. You're doing so good. Just a little longer. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Shit, shit, _shit _he isn't _leaving_."

The grip on Hermione's hair eases ever so slightly; the pressure on her breast lets up – his hand searching out over other parts of her body within his reach instead. "Be _still_," he snarls shakily in her ear, and then: "Hey, hey you! Fuck off, would you, you pathetic tosser! This isn't a free fucking show!"

Hermione _knows_ then. She recognises that voice, that _tone_, and numbness settles over her like a blanket of snow as the shock of it hits, and hits hard. She stares at the ceiling as his hand shifts in her hair – still yanking her head back awkwardly and sending needles of pain stabbing into her skull. _Malfoy_, she mouths silently to herself, excruciatingly aware of his hand fumbling roughly over the curve of her waist, across her stomach, reaching around to grab over the other breast. _Malfoy._

"Yeah, _fuck off_, good fucking job," he yells shirtily at the Snatcher he'd said was there, his hand still moving over Hermione's body, his mouth back at her ear. She flinches when he speaks close enough that his face must be pressed to the bars, much as her head is yanked painfully back against them. "I'm sorry. So fucking sorry. He's going – he's nearly…" Malfoy's hand squeezes her left breast now and she whimpers in fear and disgust, and he apologises again, in stumbling, faltering whispers as he tugs and grabs just enough to cause pain that makes her sob a gasp or let out a moan. Very realistic, she thinks muzzily, and it has to be doesn't it, to fool the Snatcher. A sob rattles out of her.

And then his hands pull away from Hermione as though she has burnt him. The Snatcher is gone, she thinks, hazy and weak with burgeoning relief.

"Granger?" His voice is urgent, but she just sits there and breathes for a moment, feeling violated and still radiating pain, her eyes staring blindly at the cell wall opposite her, her brain frozen in what she thinks dully might be shock. She lifts her hands shakily to cradle her breasts which ache and hurt _so much_, and pulls her knees up towards her chest, hunching forward a little and letting out a whimpering sob. "_Granger?_ I'm sorry. _I'm sorry._ I – I didn't – I shouldn't – I just reacted…it seemed like the best way to…_ Fuck. Shit_. Granger, are you…are you…?"

She nods just a little, her wounded fingers rubbing gentle little circles over her breasts.

"I'm fine." It is the barest whisper, and it is a lie, because she is _not_ fine, she is not. But not because of what he just did – although, yeah, that fits in there somewhere. Her heart is going rabbit quick and her breath comes in shaky sobs – there is snot at her nose, and her cheeks are sticky-wet, and thin drifts of her hair are scattered around her, ripped out of her scalp by _him. Malfoy._ She had never – had never heard that he was an informant, or sympathetic to their side, but then they kept the names of such people to as few Order members as possible. Less chance of the information getting tortured out of people – you couldn't tell what you didn't know.

She turns her head slowly, painfully, shifting her bum on the mossy damp of the stones, and staring at Malfoy in the weird half-light. He is on his knees on the stones, his hands wrapped loosely around the bars, and his eyes round and scared, locked to hers. She wonders if this is all a trick, to try to get her to divulge useful information while she believes Malfoy is on her side, and decides it doesn't matter. Whether she believes Malfoy is truly a sympathiser or not – and at this point she very much wants to, because if not then she thinks she might want to die now before… She shudders and refocuses – regardless of what she thinks about whether Malfoy is genuine or not, she still won't tell him anything that could be used against the Order.

"I'm sorry," he says, ashen and horrified, low enough that no one else in the cells could hear, were they aware enough to listen – and from the moans and the crying, some of them were still. "I – I had to hurt you or it would look suspicious. That's the only reason anyone ever comes down here."

"I can tell," Hermione gets out, with a meaningful glance at the women who lie clad in rags and wounds, nothing human left to them at all – just bodies, covered in filth and slowly dying. She isn't accusatory – she can see on his face that he is not accustomed to hurting people in the manner he just hurt her, although she knows he has fought in battles before. She is filled to overflowing with terror that she will become one of the creatures in her cell, despite Malfoy being a sympathiser. A Death Eater sympathiser; what a fucking joke. How has he managed it? To fly under the radar like this, to go unnoticed by Voldemort? Perhaps his age, she thinks – being only nineteen, Voldemort might not expect a great deal from Malfoy yet. Or maybe he has learnt Occlumency skills beyond his years.

"I can't save them," he defends himself roughly and pitifully, looking down at the floor as she stares at him unblinking, his hands tightening white-knuckle around the bars. "I'd never be able to do enough to make a difference without being caught. And then the Order loses their informant. All I can do is…basically nothing."

Hermione can't argue with his reasoning - although a small part of her wants to rage, she knows the right target is not Malfoy. She shifts painfully to face him fully, scuffing over the ground so that she is kneeling just in front of the bars, her knees butted up against them. Her arms are still crossed over her chest protectively, and she feels horribly self-conscious and strangely _embarrassed_ as his eyes drag down from her face to fix on her chest for a moment, his expression twisted up.

"I –" he begins helplessly, gesturing at her breasts. "Granger, I'm so sor–" She is sick of apologies, and there are more important things at stake.

"Can you – _can you help me?_" He shrugs a shoulder, torchlight flickering dulled in his eyes, which are still hollow with shame and shock, but his mouth is set in a determined, cold line.

"I don't know. But I'm going to try."

"Why?" Hermione asks – the million galleon question, the one that has been burning in her mind ever since she'd recognised his voice. Why _Malfoy_, the Slytherin Prince. Why is he an informant? Why is he here right now, speaking to her? Putting himself at risk.

"I grew up, Granger. My master told me to murder a man, and I realised that…that I don't have the stomach to be a murderer. That I don't…I don't want _any_ of this. But by then it was too late." His eyes shift to his left forearm – covered by the dark shirt he wears. His lips press together hard as he looks back up at her, his pupils blown in the half-light, making his hollowed eyes look dark. "I'd already been Marked."

"So you decided to risk your life by becoming an informant?" Hermione finds it hard to believe, that selfish, bigoted, childish Malfoy could ever be so noble. He smiles coldly.

"Why not? It's not like I have anything to lose, except my life. And as long as – my master lives, my life isn't my own anyway." He looks down at his hands, releasing the bars and drawing them palm-up into his lap, staring at them as though he can see the bloodstains. "I'd rather not die. But…well, I'm careful. I don't stick my neck out when I think it's too dangerous. And I do what I have to do, Merlin forgive me." There is a long silence between them, the only sound their breathing, and the muted suffering of the other occupants of the dungeon. Hermione searches Malfoy's face, and sees nothing there but truth. She wonders if she would be able to spot a lie on Malfoy's face, dripping from his lips – and then she wonders why the other side would _bother_ with a lie. She thinks she can trust him enough to let herself hope, just a little bit

"I –" she begins, but Malfoy winces then, the heel of his right hand rubbing down his left forearm, fingers curling over it and breath jerking in between his gritted teeth. The Mark, she thinks, staring at him as the pain of it twists his face and makes him ugly and wounded.

"I – I have to go, Granger," he says, trying to smooth out his features and even his voice, his grey eyes narrowed and his mouth shaped with the pain, the muscles in his jaw bunched, a vein throbbing at his temple. "I'll – I'll…do what I can. All right?"

Fear hits her. He is leaving her alone down here, alone like she was before. When anyone else could come down and _hurt her_ just like Malfoy had, and worse. So much worse. Panic builds up as sobbing gasps in her chest, and she stuffs a fist against her mouth and tries to force them back down. She is so _scared_. What if he never comes back? What if she – she is tortured and raped and murdered down here? What if… It had been easier before she'd been given hope, she thinks dizzily as the breath whoops in and out of her.

And then Malfoy's hand is clasped tight over her knee.

"Granger?" He squeezes gently and she stares into his eyes. She can see the pain in the crinkles at his eyes and the lines carved around his mouth, the infinitesimal strain in his voice. "Granger. Be brave. Okay?" His smile wavers but lifts her spirits a fraction anyway. "You're a Gryffindor. It should come easily to you," he says then, and she actually huffs the shadow of a laugh. Two of his fingers tap her knee in an odd little pat, and then he is straightening to his feet, pushing his fringe off his forehead and breathing deeply and slowly. She can see the subtle transformation take place, his eyes becoming cold and flat, his features turning to stones, his whole demeanour altering, from scared and fumbling to ruthless and indisputably deadly.

"Malfoy?" she says as he begins to walk away, and he pauses and looks back at her. The nothingness on his face scares her. "Thank you," she tells him in a tiny whisper, and the barest hint of a frown crosses his face. He says nothing – perhaps he cannot say anything, as wholly in character as he is, and Hermione merely sinks back down from her knees to her bum, clinging to the bars and watching as he strides away.

_Please_, she thinks in time with every one of his measured steps. _Please._

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><p>Food and water are delivered to the cells what seems like a good four or so hours later. But Hermione has no real way to tell time, so it's just a guess. She hides in a dark corner of the cell when she hears footsteps, thinking about how easily Malfoy had hurt her – how easily a real, loyal Death Eater or Snatcher might hurt her. She has to stay unnoticed, she thinks. Hidden. Safe. Invisible.<p>

But the guards search through the cell to drag out all the women who do not come forward to eat and drink. Corpses mostly, and that ones that are still alive but on the verge of death do not live for long. Rough, brutal hands and boots, not spells, are what end them, and then they are dragged into a pile in the middle of the long walk that runs down between the cells. Hermione watches, huddled behind rags, knowing that she will be found. But by some miracle, they pass her shadowed corner by.

Instead the three guards casually beat several of the more alert prisoners, and one of the guards picks one to rape. Hermione shuts her eyes, but she hears every sound. Her world becomes the slap of flesh on flesh, the dull _uh-uh-uhs_ that judder out of the barely conscious victim with each thrust, the rough, greedy grunts of the guard, until after several mercifully short minutes, the guard makes a low groan. Finished. She feels sick, because that could have been her, and because while it may not have been her, it had still been _someone._ Hermione doesn't open her eyes until the guards' footsteps are long gone. Orange light flickers behind her eyelids, and the acrid smell of smoke fills the air and the need to know what is happening forces Hermione to open her eyes, afraid of what she will see.

She sees nothing but the guards' victims sprawled on the floor, the ones who had been beaten, and the one who was raped. She crawls forward, feeling bile rise sour and bitter in her throat, and stares through the bars at the pile of bodies – seven or eight of them, heaped high and smouldering with flame. The smoke is thick and stinks, mostly chasing up the vent in the ceiling, but tendrils fall away and seep through the air, gradually filling it with the smell of roasting flesh. Hermione's hand clamps over her mouth as she stares, horrified. A pale hand in the pile twitches, and she chokes and whirls away, hiding her face in her hands. She can't…she can't…

The only reason Hermione doesn't throw up is sheer force of will. There is still water to drink, and thin stew to eat, and she refuses to waste the nourishment and liquid she so desperately needs. But first she does what she can for the other prisoners in her cell. The woman who was raped is in a fugue state, like most of them, but Hermione manages to coax her into crawling over to lean against a wall, and drink a little before she moves on to the next woman. And the next. There are six left now, and only one of them is conscious enough to speak – that one spits out the water Hermione tries to dribble between her lips, and rasps over and over that she wants to _die_, just let her _die_. Hermione's hands shake, and her heart is _sick_ with horror.

The cell stinks of fear, blood, and roasted meat as she drinks the water that is left – a meagre glassful – and eats a large bowl of stew; few of the women had been capable of eating. Her stomach roils, but she keeps it all down by trying to think of anything but here, eating mechanically while she determinedly pictures long-ago dinners at the Burrow. She isn't sleepy although she is _wearier_ than she has ever been in her life, but she curls up in a corner anyway, buried beneath rags, and tries to sleep. She prays that Malfoy has been able to do something, anything, toward getting her out.

She dreams of being burnt as a witch, tied to a stake and set aflame by Malfoy, screaming as her flesh crackles and slides sticky-slick from the meat of her, Malfoy's eyes unwavering on her face as the rest of the Death Eaters watch from behind their masks.

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><p>Malfoy doesn't come back by the arrival of the next meal, which is brought perhaps a day later; she doubts they are fed more than once a day. The guards don't bother searching the cell. Hermione thinks perhaps it is a weekly thing. The stench from the burning still hangs in the air, and the half-charred corpses are left there in their heap for now, beginning to gradually rot and stink <em>more<em>, in different ways. It is like hell, the smell. She waits for Malfoy, huddled in the back of the cell. She waits, and waits, for several more meals, growing more and more frantic as time goes on. He may be Draco Malfoy, former enemy, but she has accepted his story and now he is a lifeline, he is all she has. Her best hope, right now. _And he hasn't come back._

Hermione doesn't know why, and she tries to tell herself there could be reasons, and that he might not have abandoned her, betrayed her, or been killed. She isn't sure if she believes the excuses she makes up for him, though. Perhaps she is just fooling herself, and she is on her own. It doesn't matter, she decides in the end, with her hands balled into dirty fists in her lap, her hair stringy and lank around her face. All she can do is focus on staying alive, until Malfoy comes through or the Order rescues her. Because they will, she tells herself. They _will_. Hermione refuses to die here, like this, starving and weak and forgotten. She will survive, no matter what it takes, no matter what she has to bear, no matter how much it hurts. Hermione Granger is a _survivor_.

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><p>Half-starved and nearly delirious with the dehydration that makes her tongue thick and her lips cracked, Hermione is just drifting beneath the surface of sleep when a hand wraps in her hair and pulls her up roughly. It hauls at her until she struggles and thrashes up to her feet in an attempt to reduce the yank on her hair. And then the assailant traps her between the wall and their warm, hard body. For a moment she panics and thrashes violently, a low keening sawing raw from her dry throat, but then another hand gently reaches and squeezes her right breast, before releasing it altogether. A crude, awful signal, but one that she recognises with a surge of intense relief, skin crawling anyway. <em>Malfoy<em>, she thinks, so relieved that she wants to weep and cling to him with gratitude just for being here.

Just in case someone else is there, watching, she keeps struggling – but less strongly now, sobbing raggedly in terror that she doesn't find hard to fake. It isn't really fake at all. Relieved Hermione might be, but she is still so scared, and she has held the worst of that bone deep, sickening fear bottled up inside her for the last five…six…days. She has lost count. She writhes in Malfoy's grip and sobs it out, and his hand tightens in her hair, wrenching her head back as though to examine her. His eyes are hard, pale marbles pressed into his face, absent of any emotion, and his fringe falls forward over his forehead as he drags at her hair and runs his other hand down to her crotch. He is empty and cold, and _terrifying_, and it feels like a punch in the stomach.

"She'll do," he says as he looks back toward the cell door, his fingers curling gentle but firm against Hermione's crotch through her jeans, and the feeling of violation makes her feel icy and numb and feverish at once. She shakes, so frightened; because what if it had all been a trick and _this_ is what is real? What if Malfoy really just wants to hurt her and it was all just some sick amusement, to pretend to be on her side? Why did she ever believe him? What reason would Draco Malfoy have to help the Order? She's an idiot, and she's terrified. Goosebumps rise on her flesh and she chokes and struggles, the line between what is real and what is not so ragged and confused that she cannot find it any longer.

"Please," she gasps, with a voice that is becoming unused to speaking, the words thick and blurred, and wretchedly, pathetically desperate. She has forgotten whether she means the words or not – whether she needs to say them or not. Whether he will hurt her or not. "Please…_don't hurt me_…" Malfoy inhales sharply against her cheek in a way that speaks of horror and self-loathing, his jaw pressing hard to her temple, his whole body tensing as she begs him.

"But that's part of the fun – isn't it, Theo?" he says mockingly, as his fingers stroke at her through her jeans while holding her at an angle that Theo can clearly see what he's doing, and Hermione feels herself crumpling in his grasp. She shakes all over, sobbing without tears, a dry near-hyperventilation, begging again and again.

"…._please…_"

"Well I hope you _can_ have fun with _that_, Draco. I'm going to go see if I can find one of the _fresher _intakes. I prefer my girls…not half-dead," Theodore Nott says with mild distaste, from where he stands outside the cell, his nose wrinkling.

"Oh, this one's plenty lively, Theo," Malfoy says, grinding his hips against Hermione's bum in an exaggerated manner. She moans in fear and horror and tries uselessly to wrench away, trying to shove back at him with her elbows and fists, to strike at him with her feet, making terrified little noises she is barely aware of. She doesn't know what's real and what's not, and she has no real reason to believe she can trust Malfoy, who laughs breathlessly as he subdues her and holds her pinned against him. "See? Lots of life left in her yet. But you go on and have your fun, Theo. You know I like my privacy anyway."

"Sure you don't want to take the slut upstairs? _Shit_, it fucking _stinks_ in here."

"I'll use a bubblehead if I have to, idiot. Maybe you should do the same. To be honest though, I just breathe through my mouth, and don't even notice. It's just like the raids. You get used to the stench."

Nott says something in response that she doesn't hear over the whoosh of blood in her ears, but she hears Malfoy's reply: "She'll be no good to you once _I'm_ done with her, Theo. This one…this one I am going to fucking _destroy_," he says with relish. "Dirty little Muggle _bitch_." His hands fasten like iron around her wrists, putting them together so that he can hold both wrists in his one, spinning her around so that she face the wall, before returning his other hand to her crotch. He rests it there, cupping the heat of her through her jeans, and it is sickening. It is awful. He holds her trapped in place with his body when she tries to writhe away, and he is hard and lean, pushing into her and jamming her breasts painfully against the stones of the wall. Her breath slams in and out frantically, and she is getting dizzier and dizzier, heart _pounding_. She tries to pull away, but she is laughably weak, especially as her dizziness grows and black dots dance in her vision.

Then there is silence, except for the sound of her own shallow breathing and the rush of her pulse over-loud in her ears.

Malfoy's jaw brushes against Hermione's cheekbone after a brief second of stillness, his hand frozen at the crotch of her jeans; no longer holding her firmly, but instead hovering so that his touch barely brushes the seam of her jeans. She whimpers at the press of his jaw warm to her cold, filthy skin, still half-hyperventilating, and he makes little shushing sounds then, trying to comfort her. After a moment his hand moves up from her crotch to flatten against her abdomen, as he draws her away from the wall a little, to lean back into him instead of into the cold stones. He drops her wrists, and wraps his arm around her just beneath her breasts instead, holding her up. His hand rests splayed there on her tummy, warm and motionless, and he whispers in her ear, gently and soothing.

"Breathe. Just breathe. It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you now. Just breathe, Granger." Malfoy's words washes over her, and she shuts her eyes and _breathes_, panic retreating, remembering now, and trusting him just barely enough to not fight_. _"I'm not going to hurt you, I swear. I swear. It's okay. Just breathe." His voice hitches as he says _hurt you_, and she can hear him gulp, his own breath a little short and ragged. "Shit. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I had to…you know. But – I didn't have a choice. Theo… I tried to sneak away, but he fucking intercepted me turning into this row of cells and assumed I was coming down here to… And I needed to convince him."

"I know," she croaks quietly, the words hurting her throat, and then shudders out a sigh, shoulders slumping as she lets herself fall back against him for a moment. "I know. I – I just got confused." He was the arrogant, cowardly boy at school who treated her like dirt. The one who tried to have Buckbeak killed and Hagrid fired. The one who tried to kill Dumbledore, who let Death Eaters into the school. The one who stood by and did nothing as Hermione was tortured in his parents' house, so long ago. She has no proof save Malfoy's word that he is here to help her instead of hurt her, and while she _wants_ to believe him, it's very hard. He lets her go carefully and she sways on her feet, unsteady, and turns to face him. His face is no longer cold and hard, no longer as emotionless as blank slate; he looks human again, now. He looks scared and sorry and _sick_, and full of uncertainty.

"We have to – in case Theo comes back…" he says, and her eyes go big and round on him.

"What –?" Hermione starts, sharply, scared again on instinct. She takes a sharp step back and her bum and her shoulder blades hit the wall. He steps forward, awkward.

"Not…actually. Just – just looking like we're…" His hands fumble at his belt buckle, and it clinks dully as he undoes it, and fumbles to unzip his trousers. "You know… It has to look believable, or I may as well kill you now. And before you ask, no I fucking won't." The zip makes a snicking sound, and she slams her hand onto his, stopping it from unzipping any further, before yanking her hand back again, half-frightened at her daring.

"_Malfoy!_" she says it breathy and yet forceful, her eyes on his hands, on his crotch, on the waistband of his black cotton jockey shorts. Merlin. She feels disconnected, heady and dazed with adrenaline, fear, and her starvation rations and solitude. "Malfoy, _stop._" His hands are still frozen at his zipper, with the zip halfway down, but at her _stop_ he drops his hands to his sides and his eyes fix onto hers, steady but so _intent_.

"Just unzip your jeans and shove them down, all right? Theo has a habit of trying to…catch people in the act, the peeping fucking Tom, and we can't afford to get caught fucking chitchatting, Granger," Malfoy says urgently. "We don't have a choice on this. Believe me, if we didn't' have to, then I wouldn't, but I'm not willing to take any more risks than I have to, yeah?" But she can't. She _can't. _And when Hermione just stands there doing nothing, Malfoy hisses through his teeth and yanks her jeans button open, drags the zipper down. Her eyes shift to his face, looking for some kind of reassurance, and he tries to smile - a broken, wretched expression that shouldn't reassure her, and yet somehow _does,_ so much more than a charming, calm smile would.

"I'm not going to actually _you know _– shit, I wouldn't have brought Theo down here if I'd had a choice. But he asked where I was going and I had to tell him or he'd know I was lying, and – well, suffice it to say, this was the best solution I could come up with on the spur of the moment," Malfoy explains in a rough whisper, as he bends and yanks her jeans down, and pulls them entirely off one leg, leaving them hanging around the other ankle. She just stands there, and lets Malfoy arrange her like some kind of doll. She doesn't have the energy to resist even if she wanted to – it takes all the energy she has just to stay upright. He grabs the side of her knickers, and she makes a small, wounded sound, and he snatches his hand back like she's burnt him.

"Please, please, not them," she whispers cracked and small, and Malfoy's Adams apple bobs as he swallows hard, chin trembling. "I can't…Malfoy, if you want me to trust you, _not them_."

"Yeah, yeah, okay. Not them. Okay." He leaves her knickers on, instead touching his wand to them and whispering a charm so that the cotton becomes transparent, and Hermione feels her face go hot.

"Don't _look_."

"I - I… Merlin, I _won't_." He sounds just as mortified, his voice thick and cracking as he pushes her back against the wall, shoving down his own trousers around his hips, and pulling his jockey shorts precariously low, so that her eyes catch a glimpse of pale blond pubic hair before she squeezes them shut and turns her head away. She stares at the corner of the cell, at the place Theodore Nott will be reappearing from instead, focusing on breathing and breathing and not feeling a single thing.

"I'm sorry," Malfoy murmurs as he hooks her naked leg up, his arm around her waist, his face nestling down to the crook of her shoulder, hefting her up a little in his arms, experimentally. His breath is hot on her skin. "I'm sorry." And Hermione just stands there pliably, feeling distant - floating on clouds of hunger, separated from her body. Malfoy mumbles something about how that position should work all right, and then lifts his face. His cheeks are red with embarrassment as he meets her eyes; there is a scant inch separating their faces, and she can't look away.

"Granger? Hey, you still with me?" She nods just barely, her eyes not shifting from his, as though they are her anchor. Malfoy's eyes are grey and framed by surprisingly dark lashes, and they don't look cold and as unfeeling as glass at all – they are soft and clouded with worry and embarrassment and shame, and desperate apology. "It's okay. I'm not _really _going to…"

"I know," she whispers, but she doesn't sound very certain to her own ears, even though she is pretty sure she is. But it's been a long…week? She doesn't even know how much time has passed; it has been days of trying to care for the women who she shares the cell with, who are slowly dying around her; feeding them and giving them water, and trying to comfort them. Hiding from the guards. Existing on a glass or two of water a day, and one bowl of thin stew. The stench from the rotting pile of corpses constantly filling the air. Being afraid that Malfoy was never going to come back… Hermione isn't sure of anything anymore. She wants to both shrink from Malfoy and cling to him at once, and she settles for standing frozen in his grasp, his arm around her waist and his hand hooked around her thigh. Every point of contact is both too much and not enough. He is threat and comfort, and she just wants to go home. She licks her lips. "You didn't come back. For so – so long. I thought…"

"I'm sorry. I have to get hold of my contact in the Order, but I haven't been able to get away to leave a message at the drop point yet. My master's been watching me, lately. I think he knows that I was down here, the other day." Malfoy speaks soft and quick. "Hang on, I have to - have to pretend. But I won't…" His hips start to thrust into hers, and she jerks, half-startled, her hands clutching onto his shoulders. His crotch rubs again and again into hers, in rhythmic little movements, and it feels good and so, so bad. Disgusts crawls up and down Hermione's spine, and makes her stomach lurch sickly. "Not to mention, there are a lot of people here who dislike me because of the Dark Lord's favouritism, and would love to fuck me up. So…I can't come down here a lot, in case he gets suspicious, or someone like Theo figures out what's going on and tattles to him."

"Is he going to want to t-torture me?" Hermione asks in a small, scared voice, because all she can think about now is Voldemort, and what he's going to do to her. Malfoy's face changes – surprise, shock - and his little thrusts against her stutter to a brief halt.

"No – Granger, he doesn't know that you've been captured. He doesn't know you're _here._ The – the Snatchers didn't recognise you, the thick fucking idiots. I saw you, when they brought you in with the others, and _I_ recognised you. I told them I'd get you…_settled in_, and I put you back here, with the ones who…who nobody really wants anymore. The ones that no one important notices. I thought that it might keep you safe, for a while. Maybe even long enough for me to figure out a way to get you out with the Order's help, without exposing myself."

It is her turn to stare at him in shock as he keeps pushing against her, and she tries to ignore the feeling. He had done that for her? Lied about who she was, and taken it upon himself to hide her? That was far riskier than what she had thought he'd done. She doesn't know what to say, exactly, stumbling over her words, awkward and uncertain, settling her hands up on his shoulders to help find her balance as he keep making those little nudging grinds into her pelvis. Her mind flicks to that for a moment - is this what dry humping feels like? If so, Hermione doesn't know why anyone would ever want to do it, because all it does is make her feel humiliated and awkward. It must be different, with someone you care about. His shoulders feel warm and lean under her fingers, and she finds herself holding on more tightly than she needs to. "Thank you, Malfoy. I – I'd probably be _dead _if you hadn't…"

His fingers squeeze at her thigh as he readjusts her leg, and his pelvis nudges into hers more…snugly than before as he shifts on his feet, and they both suck in their breaths sharply and look away; she can feel a blush heating her cheeks. She is only glad there is no bulge digging into her – that would be _too_ awful. But he seems as far from aroused as is possible, thank Merlin. They shift against the wall awkward and jerky to try to get away from the _too_-realistic angle and nearly fall, only his quick save keeping them upright. Hermione breathes slowly, trying to keep her balance on the unsteady ground, with one leg wrenched into the air so that it is already beginning to ache and cramp a little.

"Sorry," he mumbles with acute embarrassment as their bodies bump together a little _too_ intimately again, and she shakes her head, brushing off his apology as she gives up on trying to touch as little of him as possible and leans into him. He is so _warm_, and leaning against him seems to help in holding them steady.

"The – your contact in the Order. The drop point. When do you think you can do that?"

"I don't know." He shakes his head, frustration crinkling over his brow, and it is so strange to be standing here with _Malfoy_, talking about rescue, and simulating sex. _Rape_, she thinks then, and gulps hard, because that is what it would be were this really happening. She stifles the little whisper of fear that wants to squeak from between her lips, pressing them hard together. Malfoy doesn't seem to notice, going on: "The Dark Lord is watching me closely, like I said. That I'm coming down to the dungeons, especially back to _this _part of the dungeons, is an anomaly. And my master pays attention to anomalies. I don't think we have much time before he realises that you're here, and you're _you_." Fear ripples down Hermione's spine in icy fingers, but Malfoy keeps talking fast and she tries to focus on his brisk, urgent words.

"We don't have long now either, Granger – Theo doesn't, um, take long, usually. Like I said, he likes to play peeping tom. I only came down here today to place a – a sort of monitoring spell on you. Like Healers use. It will monitor your vitals, and alert me to any severe changes that indicate you might be in trouble. Just in case... All right?" His eyes scan over her face, looking for her permission, and that makes her want to laugh - a bitter, horrible sound. He doesn't need her permission. And why would Draco Malfoy care for her permission anyway?

"Okay." She nods immediately, and Malfoy slides out his wand and mutters a sibilant, complex little spell. She feels the magic shiver over her; it soaks cool and tingling into her skin. Malfoy's eyes skim and skip over her as she slumps between him and the wall in a near daze, relishing the feel of magic on her skin. It feels far too good. She jerks to full awareness when his thumb drags over her cracked lips, trying to flinch back from him. "_Don't_," she says, blinking like an owl, watching him nervously, feeling trapped far too close to him. He bites his lip, looking apologetic but not saying it, something that worries her just a fraction lurking in his eyes. His body shifts against hers, and he hisses an inhale that he tries and fails to stifle. His cheeks flush slowly with colour.

"I'm - I'm sor- Um. I… You're dehydrated," Malfoy says in a rush instead of completing his stammering apology, and holds up his wand. "Here; open your mouth." She does so obediently, and he whispers _"Aguamenti" _and a trickle of water emerges from the tip of his wand. He puts it between her lips, and she moans in pleasure as it bathes her mouth with cool wetness, running down her throat and spilling out over her chin. It's heavenly and delicious, and she wants more and more. She drinks until her stomach is full and sloshing, while Malfoy watches her silently, carefully, and she thinks the expression on his face would suit Ron or Harry better than him. It is disconcerting to see Draco Malfoy stare at her with such gentle care. "This should hold you until the next time I come down. I'll - I'll try to bring you food and drink tomorrow, and perhaps by then I'll have been able to contact the Order."

Hermione doesn't speak, too busy gulping the water, and Malfoy fills in the silence with nervous words, his hips never ceasing that horrible undulating. She is shocked that he doesn't get an erection just from the pure physical stimulation, but he doesn't. "I will do everything in my power to get you out of here. Maybe if my master leaves on one of his occasional forays in the next day or so, I may be able to get you out myself without anyone noticing. I can't do it while he's here - he watches me too carefully. I'm his…protégé, I think." He laughs at that, low and unhappy. "I finally came to my stupid fucking senses and realised I couldn't keep going along with monstrous things just to save my own bloody skin, and _that_ was when the Order told me to stay on and spy on my master instead. To _ingratiate_ myself with him. So I try to get free of all this fucking _horror_, and end up being more part of it than ever."

"Why - why didn't you just run?" she asks, water running down her chin and chest, and soaking into both their shirts, before she resumes sipping at the tip of his wand, at the trickle of water it still emits. His little thrusting movements are almost forgotten now; she tries to ignore the strange sensation, and tells herself firmly that it's just a cover, just what's necessary, and they're both wearing underwear - there's no point in _thinking_ about how gross it feels.

"I wanted to try to make a difference. To…to make up for all the shit I'd done," he mumbles as though embarrassed by the desire to make amends, and Hermione stares up at him, bewildered and disbelieving. Draco Malfoy, wanting to do something as - as _right_ as make amends? Then footsteps sound, and Malfoy swears under his breath, _finiting _the charm and slipping his wand back up his sleeve. "I'm sorry," he murmurs in Hermione's ear, and she tries to mentally brace herself as she swallows the last of the sweet, cool water. "But you should fight me, if you can. This – this won't be pleasant – I have to make this look…real," he says, and her heart sinks, her stomach lurches with fear. "Theo needs to know the girl I'm – I'm raping, is _scared…_horrified…_hating_ it. I'll be back tomorrow, if I can get away."

Then Malfoy's hand buries in Hermione's hair and he drags at it hard enough that she genuinely struggles against him before she can think about it, tears springing to her eyes. "I'm sorry." She barely hears it whisper from between his lips, as he begins to rut himself against her even harder than before, his eyes turning away from her. And within seconds, she feels an erection slowly swell, at last. She gulps, feeling _sick_ and scared and not knowing how much to fight, and not knowing how far he will go…she feels like she is really going to be violated, and her breath comes in sobbing coughs, and she stands there frozen. And then he grinds himself into her and holds it, burying his face against her shoulder and choking out the beginning of a low, wobbling groan. Another thrust - another - stuttering and arrhythmic, then a satisfied sound rumbles in Malfoy's chest that makes her stomach flip and twist and he pulls away a little, acting as though he's tucking his penis back into his shorts. Acting as though he's orgasmed.

Malfoy lets her hair go then, and slaps her - hard enough that she knows the shape of his fingers will blaze red on her skin. She cries out and Malfoy grins and does it again, harder, and pain _flares_. Again, again. She chokes and screams. She hates this. She hates _him_ even if he's only doing what he has to, but she's still frozen there, unable to bring herself to fight even if it would look more realistic. Even if she wishes she _could _claw his damn eyes out and beat his into unconsciousness. He raises his hand back as though he's going to hit her again. "Please…please, _don't,_" she cries instinctively and tries to flinch away, and he laughs at her, face cruel and leering.

"What should I do then? Do you want me to fuck you again? Is that what you want, bitch?" He places his hand on her crotch - on the transparent cotton knickers, over her dark curls and stimulation-swollen flesh - and she chokes on spit and _thrashes_, begging him not to – not just to give Nott the show he expects, but because – because _he is touching her there._ She doesn't _care_ if she's wearing cotton undies - they can still _see_ everything, and barrier of cotton or not, she can _feel_ it.

"_Don't!_" The backs of his fingers brush rough over the dark curls and soft flesh nestled between her thighs and she gasps and stiffens, trying to wrench her leg down from where he has it yanked up to his hip, trying to _protect_ herself. Fighting at last. Malfoy fights her back - holds her still, cups her vulva firmly – "_Stop!_" she spits at him, clawing at his arms. He huffs a derisive sound and shoves her thighs apart with a knee, slapping her inner thigh with a force that stings and hurts, and then knocks her arms down, sliding one hand around her throat to pin her to the stone wall, leaving the other free. He uses that hand to grope at her crotch again, and she chokes against his the squeeze of his hand around her throat as he fumbles ineffectively against the invisible barrier of her knickers. There is a still sane part of her mind that knows he's just trying to make it look good to Theo, who she _knows_ is watching from the shadows, but the rest of her is caught in panic.

"Stop. Don't. _Stop._ Please. Please - _please please please -_" The words waver from her on sobs and gasps as he panic overwhelms her. "Ah!" He pinches her inner thigh and she tries to jerk away. He slaps her and she throws her arms up to protect her face. "Pleeeease," she whines in a pathetic, snotty whimper. "Please, please, _don't_."

"You're dry as a bone again, you frigid little cunt," Malfoy complains, and he is avoiding her gaze, staring at her chest as he slaps her crotch hard with one hand. She cries out and tries to double over at the unexpected pain, and he steps back and lets her, and then shoves her rest of the way to the ground. He pushes her with one foot, knocking her onto her side, his eyes flat. His erection juts out against his jockey shorts, and he swears at her as he jerks up his trousers and arranges his erection inside them.

"Bitch," he tells her, and spits on the ground by Hermione's face, and she flinches as drops spatter cold on her cheek, lying there shivering, staring up at him, every muscle trembling and tears and snot smearing her face. She curls up, making a ball on the ground, trying stupidly to hide, hands covering the front of her knickers as though they can protect her. He had – he had – when Malfoy had said they wouldn't actually…but _that_, that had felt like _actually_ to her. Even if it hadn't been technically _actually_, it had felt pretty fucking indistinguishable. She shuts her eyes, blocking out the sight of him. Just right now, she doesn't care that he is helping her, that it is all just pretend – she just _hates _him. _Loathes_ him.

"Theo," she hears Malfoy say with just the right note of mildly irritated surprise, as she lies there huddled as small as possible. She has enough presence of mind to turn her face away from Theo, at least. "I thought I told you I like privacy?"

"To what, finger the bitch, and kick her around?"

Malfoy laughs. "I'd already fucked her once, Theo. And you can't talk anyway – I know why you always sneak off to the south tunnel. It's where they keep all the pretty boy–"

"Fuck up, Malfoy!" Nott snarls and Malfoy chuckles again, footsteps leading away from her, and the shrieking creak of the cell doors swinging open and then shut again rings through Hermione's head.

"Ladies first, Theo," he mocks, voice more distant. "I won't shit on _your_ predilections - or expose you - if _you_ don't mock me for only getting in one fuck." There is a long pause, and then Nott says something that sends chills down Hermione's spine, and makes her hide her face by curling up even tighter, shoulders shaking, body slowly going numbed with cold from the stone floor, and maybe shock as well.

"Hey," Nott says. "Don't I know that girl?"

"I wouldn't think so," Malfoy says, with perfectly relaxed timing. "She's a Muggle, far as I know. Come on, Theo. I'm sick of the stench down here. Fucking animals."

Hermione lies on the ground and cries until she has no more tears left, feeling violated and beaten, because she _was_. _Fucking animals. _The words run around and around in her head until she thinks they will drive her mad. Malfoy is far too convincing an actor; none of that at the end had felt pretend to Hermione. None of that had felt pretend at all. He had said to her that they weren't actually going to…and he had been telling the truth, but she hadn't realised how _real_ it would feel. He had been completely honest when he had told her it wouldn't be pleasant, but she just had realised _how_ unpleasant. It takes a very long time for Hermione to scrape herself up off the ground and pull her jeans back on, and once she has, all she can do is stumble over to the corner she has claimed as her own and curl there beneath the rags, imagining what it will be like when she is rescued.

When she sees Harry again, and Ron, and she is _safe_, and all of this is a distant nightmare.

When she is _free._

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><p><em>Please let me know what you thought! :)<em>


	2. Part Two

**Edit:** As of the **28th of April 2015**, I have made major changes to this fic, thanks to constructive criticism by a reader. Scenes have been added, and the tone and content of many existing scenes have been altered or expanded upon. I hope that such alterations give a better picture of the dynamic between Draco and Hermione, which previously was not illustrated in a great deal of detail because I was trying to keep this fic short. However, the subject material does not lend itself to brevity, it seems - and in order to make a proper go of achieving what I set out to achieve, I have had to make some changes. I _recommend_ skimming back through the fic from the beginning before reading on, but doing so is not _necessary_. I hope you find the changes I've made to be positive ones!

Liss xx

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><p><span><strong>Part Two<strong>

There are footsteps, quiet and even down the hallway. It's - it's only one person, Hermione thinks, as she pushes further back into her corner, curling down as small as she can. There is a large chunk of broken stone just in front of her, which feels almost like a wall and gives her a stupid sense of safety, and she has gathered up some of the rags around the cell, hiding beneath them when the guards bring food and water. It has only been three meals since Malfoy came to - to see Hermione, but it feels as though it has been anywhere from five days to a week from how hungry and thirsty Hermione is.

She stopped urinating altogether some time ago, the tiny bit of water she gets to drink barely enough to keep her alive, let alone pee, and her tongue feels thick and useless in her dried out mouth, her head pounds from the headaches that constantly plague her, her stomach feels like a vacuum. She is dying, slowly and painfully. Just like the three women in her cell who remain alive, if insensible. If not for Hermione feeding them the food and water the guards leave, they would already be dead; they make no move to help themselves. Just as Malfoy has made no move to help her.

It has been a while now since Hermione has been able to believe that Malfoy will be back to help her. As her thirst has grown and cracked her lips and grated her throat raw, and as her stomach has churned and twisted and hunger has become a constant companion making her lightheaded and dizzy, she has given up on him. Maybe, she has thought to herself on the rare moments she's been conscious of much more than hunger, thirst, and strange delirium, he's decided she's too much of a risk. Or maybe he was too closely watched to be able to come back down. Or maybe he had been sent away on a mission and wasn't even in Britain anymore. Or maybe, it has all been a trick from the beginning, and this is just the method of torture and breaking that Voldemort has chosen for her.

Hermione doesn't know the exact reason why Malfoy has abandoned her, but she believes that he has. Until now; until she hears lone footsteps where the guards always, always come in pairs. She hides her face against the stinking rags that barely pad the stone floor beneath her, and begs for it to be him, striding down the hallway toward her, past the pile of smouldering bodies that fills the dungeons with a foul, sickening stench. She is so hungry that the smell of cooked flesh makes her stomach _crave_ it, no matter how awful and depraved that makes her feel. The cell door screeches faintly as the unknown person pushes it open, and then there is a heavy, metallic thunk as it is pushed shut again, the locking mechanism falling into place. Hermione balls up even more, holding her breath until she feels like she's going to pass out as the footsteps draw nearer and nearer.

"It's me," a familiar voice says softly, then, so close to her, and a hand touches her shoulder gently. Hermione lets out the breath she's been holding with a tearful, plosive sound, and scrambles into a sitting position, staring disbelievingly at Malfoy as he crouches beside her. She is swaying and dazed, and the light from his _lumos_ is too bright after days in the near-dark - she squints against it, her hand coming shakily up to shield her from the glare. She needs to _see_ him - hungry for the sight of someone friendly after so long alone. "Merlin, Granger…" He puts out his _lumos_ and she blinks against the afterimage the _lumos_ left in her vision, bewildered and dazed, too dehydrated to even try to speak. "Granger, shit, are you - are you okay?"

"H-how long?" she croaks, her hand creeping out and latching onto his wrist. He is warm and real, not a product of her imagination but really, truly here, and she keeps a tight hold of him, fingers scrabbling for an even tighter grip, as though she's afraid he'll vanish if she lets go. His brows crease together with concern that is at odds with how her mind's eyes still thinks Malfoy should appear - he looks old and tired and filled with painful sympathy, and not at all like the boy she had known, once. He twists his wrist gently free of her death grip, and she makes an involuntary sound of loss before he sinks properly onto his knees and shuffles closer to her, grasping her hand in his so that their fingers interlink. It's heavenly, to feel someone else - someone safe - touch her, and she basks in the comfort of human touch.

"Six days," he murmurs, sending sick shock though her, even though she'd half-expected it to be that long. He holds up his wand with his free hand. "Water?"

"Oh god, _please_," she gasps, and is aware enough to see him flinch at the naked, desperate pleading in her voice. He sets his wand tip to her lip, whispering the charm.

"_Aguamenti._" Oh god, it's so good. Hermione is greedy and shaking, gulping it down without thought to how desperate and vulnerable she must seem, her fingers clutching hard at his warm, strong ones as she fills her mouth to overflowing with the liquid. It tastes faintly sweet compared to the stagnant, filthy fare she's gotten over the past six days. It spills down over her chin and wets her clothing, and she relishes that, feeling gloriously decadent. And then all too soon Malfoy ends the charm, and she moans in protest. "You can have some more soon," he says uncomfortably as she presses in closer to him, mumbling _"more, more"_ and things that she isn't even cognizant of, slurring pleas incoherently. "You can, Granger. Just - just you should have some food, too."

"You have food?" Her belly growls loudly, and she doesn't care in the slightest. He nods, shrugging a bag off his shoulder and digging in it with his free hand. He tries to pull his hand from hers, to get at the food more easily, but Hermione refuses to let him go, clinging with all her strength. "Please don't. I - I… I thought you weren't coming back. I thought I was going to die down here." Malfoy makes a strangled sound at that, and then after a frozen, awkward moment, shifts position so that he is settled in the corner beside her, his legs stretched out in front of him and the bag on his lap. Hermione immediately presses up close to him, their hands still entwined - arms bumping together now too, their clasped hands settling to rest on his thigh, their legs bumped together.

It feels like all Malfoy's warmth is seeping into her, and the shivers she hadn't realised she'd been trembling from slowly start to dissipate as he flicks his wand and mutters something, and a cloak spirals out of the bag and slips around behind her shoulders. It's woollen and it smells of him, and as he passes her a container full of hot food - oh god, _food_ - Hermione lets out a sigh and melts against him, her head falling to rest against his upper arm. He makes a startled, uncomfortable sound and stiffens, but doesn't draw away. "Thank you," she murmurs, and it's not just for the rich, meaty stew that he brought her, but for the comforting feel of his body, hot and reassuring against hers. She dives into the stew then, digging in with her filthy fingers, and shovelling the chunks of meltingly tender meat and delicious vegetables into her mouth.

"I…um…" Hermione looks up with her cheeks stuffed full of stew to see Malfoy holding out a fork to her.

"Fank 'oo," she mumbles and grabs it with her stew-coated fingers, spearing up more meat and chewing fast because what if someone comes while he's here, and he has to go before she'd finished? Her hunger combined with the threat of him leaving with the food uneaten spurs her on to eat like a starved animal. He talks a little, but she doesn't really hear him, and she thinks he realises that too, because what snatches of words she understands are irrelevancies, really. Apologies, mostly. The one that she pays proper attention to is his abject apologies for what he'd done to her last time, which she tells him to just shut up about, please. She doesn't want to think about it. "You had to do it. We both know that," she pauses in her eating long enough to say. "So I don't blame you for it. But that doesn't mean I want to think about it. I just want to…pretend it didn't happen. All right?"

He shuts up about it then thank Merlin, but he finds other things to apologise for - for taking so long to return, for not thinking of leaving her food and water, for not being able to get her out yet - and saying how glad he is that she's still alive. How worried he was when he couldn't come back down sooner. How scared he was that she'd be discovered. She looks up at Malfoy at one point as she chews, and sees him staring at her with something rather like horrified concern in his eyes at the state she's in, and buckets of guilt too, and she wonders how it is that he's _changed_ so much.

When did he start caring about Mudbloods? The question intrigues her, but eating is more important, and the flavours of the meal bursting over her tongue make it hard to think clearly. Hermione gorges herself until every last bit is gone and her stomach feels swollen and bloated, and when she rubs her hand over her abdomen, it _feels_ rounder than before. She's already lost enough weight that emaciated would describe her pretty well perfectly, and the large meal in her belly sticks out roundly. "Oh _Merlin_," she sighs contentedly, sinking her head back against Malfoy's arm and thinking how much more _comfortable_ he is than the hard stones of the cell, still holding his fingers so tight she thinks their hands may have melded together by now.

"I'm sorry I couldn't come sooner," he says in a variation of what he'd said while she was eating, but she's actually listening now. "I tried to get away, but the Dark Lord…well, he promoted me, I suppose you'd say. I'm his _protégé_, now. And unfortunately that seems to involve a lot of time spent by his side, or watched like a hawk by everyone else, who wants me to fuck up. I couldn't get down her, or away to the drop point." That hits her hard, like a punch to the stomach, and she stiffens, pulling away from him to meet his eyes. They're dark in the light, his pupils blown wide.

"The Order doesn't even know I'm here?"

"No, not yet, I'm afraid." Hermione's heart sinks like lead, and she stares around the dim, filthy cell, tears welling up in her eyes as she thinks of spending another moment longer trapped down here, in the rubble and with the company of women that were more dead than alive. "I swear to Merlin, I _tried _to get away to the drop point, but _fucking_ Crabbe and Goyle Sr were up my arse all week. I couldn't go anywhere without one of them trailing me." He stares down at his hands, mouth twisting with a bitter sort of sadness. "They've hated me ever since I…since things went south between Greg and Vincent and me."

"What happened?" Hermione doesn't really care, but she needs something to distract her or she's going to burst into miserable, hopeless tears, and if she starts she doesn't know if she'll be able to stop. His thumb sweeps lightly back and forth over hers, and she doesn't think he even knows he's doing it. This is _Malfoy_, she thinks - and then, _this is nice_, she thinks, and the world itself seems to quiver and distort at that unnatural thought, before settling again.

"Well, first Vince, died during the Battle of Hogwarts. Do - do you remember?" She does, actually. She remembers that night very well. Too well, she thinks sometimes. The deaths, so many deaths, and in the end they had been all for nothing. Harry and Voldemort had faced off, and both ended up having to retreat after their duel, both of them barely alive. "Well, first there was that, and they blamed it on me." Malfoy looks sad. Hermione has no sympathy for Crabbe, but she doesn't say so. "And then shortly after I'd taken on the role of double agent, my master -"

"Can…can you not call him that?"

"Sorry," he says, chastised. "You-know-who…well, he ordered Greg and me to capture someone. Georges Dupree, a wizard who'd spent his life studying Dementors. But I had instructions from the Order to leave him alive for them to collect. So I set Greg up, so that it looked as though he'd fucked up the mission, not me, and you-know-who had him tortured." Hermione winces despite herself.

"Is he - ?"

"He's - he's still alive," Malfoy says, anticipating her question, his thumb still stroking back and forth over Hermione's skin. "But he's with his mother. Something - something went wrong during the torture. Or, maybe not _wrong_, it just…didn't have the effect you-know-who intended." Malfoy sounds guilty, and then in another layer atop that, he seems guilty for _feeling_ guilty. "He's blind."

"Oh..."

"So you can see why the pair of them hate me."

"I suppose so," she murmurs, feeling more and more human as every moment passed. Drowsiness begins to overtake her as her starved body starts digesting the food she's stuffed it with, and she feels her eyelids get heavier and heavier. Malfoy elbows her lightly.

"Hey, wake up, Granger."

"Wha?"

"I need to get up - I..." He looks uncertain for a moment, before pulling out a large bottle of water and showing it to her. "I need to give this the other prisoners." Hermione sits bolt upright and drops Malfoy's hand, fighting back sleep, her eyes narrowing on him.

"Why?" she demands suspiciously. "What's in it?" She isn't stupid; she knows full well it contains more than just water, and the uncomfortable look in Malfoy's eyes only confirms that. He shifts, and looks away. "Tell me," she demanded, and he sighed.

"It has a sedative potion mixed into it, Granger. It's why they're so…out of it. It dulls the mind, and the body, so that sensation just…goes away, and you just stop caring, anymore. I can't save these prisoners, and I'm probably already damned for what I do as Death Eater, but just in case I'm not, I'd rather not kill anyone I don't have to." Malfoy looks so terribly tired and sad and filled with guilt that Hermione's heart pangs for him of its own accord. "But the potion means that they don't care what happens to them. I can't get it to them always, and I can't get it to all the prisoners, but I do what little I can without too great a risk of exposure." Hermione stares at him for a long moment, trying to see inside his head, and it's he who drops his eyes first. "I'm not a good person - I _know_ that - but I try to do what I can."

"Go on then," she whispers, her throat thick and clogged with emotion she can't decipher, and watches him as he goes to each of the three women. Malfoy speaks to them softly, crouched at their sides, soothing their bewildered fear when they see him and expect pain. His hair falls over his face, shining pale by the dull torchlight that burns down the hallway, and his hand reaches out to them, offering small, brief comfort in touches and squeezes. Then he holds the bottle to their lips, and makes sure that they each drink deep, before helping them lie down again on the cold floor. He goes slowly to each woman, patiently repeating the process with each one, and Hermione watches, taking in every detail with tired but fascinated eyes. He squeezes one's hand, and presses his hand to another's cheek, and she can hear his whispers, soft and kind. And when he comes to sit back down by Hermione, his features are strained and engraved with a sickened sort of sadness.

"Who _are_ you?" she asks him, as he perches on the broken stone she uses as a wall to huddle against, and he seems to understand. He hums a contemplative sound, before beginning to speak.

"Snape - before the Battle of Hogwarts, he told me of a location that he'd kept secret from _everyone_. No one but him and I knew about it, he said. And he told me that if he died, to go there." Malfoy pulls out a handkerchief and wets it, before muttering a warming charm. "And then he died, and I went there, and I found - fuck. I found a lifetime of memories, and a pensieve. Snape had been copying and storing his memories for _decades_, and I was the one he wanted to see them all."

"Oh…" Hermione thinks that maybe she understands, a little, from what Harry had said about Snape's memories. She starts in fright as Malfoy presses the handkerchief to her cheek, and he pulls away quickly and apologises.

"Sorry. You're…well, you're kind of filthy, Granger. Do…do you want to do it?" He holds out the handkerchief to her - a large white square of starched cotton striped with shiny silver - and she bites her lip, before slowly shaking her head in the negative.

"No," she whispers, hoarse and thready, twisting her fingers together in her lap. "I - I can't see where I'm dirty anyway, so - you may as well." He pauses a moment, hesitant and uncertain, before gently smudging the white cloth across her cheek, and picking up his story again.

"And I watched all the memories. It took some time, but I saw every single one. All the moments in his life that could have been even vaguely important - the good, the bad, the embarrassing - I saw them all." Malfoy sighs, re-wetting the now stained cloth and heating it again, sweeping it firmly over Hermione's forehead as she shuts her eyes. "How are you supposed to be the same person after seeing life through someone else's eyes? I tried, for a while, but I just couldn't. Too much had changed. I _knew_ too much. I felt like such a fucking idiot." His touch is soothing, cleansing away the dirt and leaving clean, warmed skin behind, and his story, told in soft, gentle murmurs, explains a lot. "I found out that Dumbledore had _let _me disarm him, for instance. That all along, he and Snape had been trying to protect me. That Dumbledore had _planned_ to die. That…that was a big one for me to accept. But when I had, finally, after months of going through the motions and trying to keep my head down and avoid you-know-who's attention, I broke, and I went to the Order, to try to defect."

He sighs heavily again, tone wry. "And instead they told me to keep doing what I was doing, only even better than before, and spy for them. I've spent the past, what, nearly two years now, passing out what information I could. And I suppose it's been useful." She opens her eyes as he sweeps the cloth over the tip of her nose and falters to a halt, and she waits patiently for him to find the words. His eyes are guilt-ridden as he finishes: "I really fucking hope it's been useful. The things I've done…" She looks away, eyes sliding from his down to stare at his pointed chin.

"Don't tell me, please."

"Don't worry, Granger. I wasn't planning on it. I try not to think about it at all, usually," he says, as he scrubs the last few bits of filth from her face and neck, and then cleans and re-wets the handkerchief once more so that it is sopping, dripping water. "Here. You probably have, um, other places you want to clean," he says, flushing red to the tips of his ears, and looking away, and Hermione finds herself stifling the sudden, weak chuckle his embarrassment startles out of her. "Later. Once I'm gone."

Malfoy stays as long as he can. Over an hour passes while they sit huddled together in the corner, talking between long, uncomfortable pauses. Mostly they talk about small things, to distract her, trying to find memories from school that they both find funny or at least harmless. But Hermione also asks him to pass along a message to members of the Order, when he gets to the drop point, and they talk more about Snape, and being a spy, and he apologises yet again for what he's done to her. The conversation is stilted and awkward, and utterly surreal. When Malfoy has to go Hermione just wants to cling to him and _keep_ him from leaving, terrified of being alone again.

* * *

><p>Hermione manages to stay unnoticed for two more meals, without any more visits from Malfoy - there is not enough water with the meals for her <em>and<em> the few other prisoners in her cell, though, and she finds herself very thankful that Malfoy had come down. If he hadn't given her that water, then either she would be near death now, or she would have had to withhold the water from the other women. She is so very glad that she didn't have to make that choice. They may be mercifully insensible to what goes on around them, but Hermione can't bring herself to withhold food and water from them.

She finds herself missing Malfoy too, craving the illusion of security his presence had given her on his last visit. She still feels sick to her stomach over what Malfoy had done to her - had been _forced_ to do to her during the visit that Nott had been there for, when she lets herself dwell on it. But she also understands that right now some minor violations are better than what could be happening. Malfoy has saved her life, and while he has hurt her…well, she saw the sick, horrified shame in his eyes. She _knows_ that he didn't want to do it. She believes that he wants to help her. She _believes_ that the arrogant, cowardly boy from Hogwarts has become a man who regrets the evil he had been involved in. She has to believe him, because if she doesn't, she may as well kill herself now. But she _does_ believe him.

She believes him because he is protecting her as much he can. Because he came down to help her. Because his story about Snape's memories has the ring of truth to it. Because the stark misery on his sharp features isn't something she thinks can be faked. So Hermione believes Malfoy, and tells herself that she is…lucky, relatively speaking. After all, it would be so, so much worse if Malfoy hadn't hidden her away from Voldemort's notice. She may have been humiliated, violated, and hurt, but all of those things would seem like comforts if she'd been tossed to Voldemort, she is sure. Hermione tries _very_ hard to focus on the positive.

And then on the third meal - day? Hermione doesn't know for sure - after Malfoy's last visit, the guards do a thorough search of the cell and find her this time, huddled in her corner under the filthy, stinking rags and the cloak Malfoy left her, dehydrated again and half-conscious. Her luck - such as it is - has run out. They laugh, and drag her out into the middle of the cell by her upper arms and hair, and throw her hard onto the ground. They aren't Death Eaters, but merely Snatchers - minions, peons, not that it matters at all because they are no less likely to rape and kill her. The shock of hitting the stone judders up her arms from her palms as she catches herself, and her right knee hits an uneven up-jut of broken stone floor bruisingly hard. She yelps at the pain, voice raw and cracked with thirst.

"_Please!_" she gasps as she rolls onto her back and then does a clumsy sort of crab walk away from the three grinning guards. She stares up at them with genuine, sick terror and _begs_ because she has heard the stories, and she knows that there is no virtue in being defiant and brave. Pleading doesn't usually do much good either, but maybe…. "_Please! Don't!_" One of them laughs at her terror, the sound sharp and jarring, and advances on her.

"We've got us quite a tidy little live one 'ere, boys. Wonder what she's doing in the used up section; scrub 'er up and she'd be a tasty morsel. Wouldn't she?"

"Aye," says another one, rubbing his hands together and leering. Hermione scrambles back, hand scrabbling for a loose bit of stone she can use as a weapon. Her breath wrenches frantically, edging towards hyperventilation, and with a jolt of realisation, she wonders if her panicked breathing will set off an alert on Malfoy's monitoring spell. Rather than trying to calm herself, she breathes faster and faster, sucking in breaths, trying to balance on the edge between dizzy and actually passing out. Maybe. Maybe if she can get herself close enough to hyperventilation it might work. She doesn't know if he is even around to help her if the monitoring spell alerts him, but she has to try. She's not going to just give up. "Please," she begs again. "Please don't hurt me."

'Oh, little girl, I'm afraid that we don't want to do anything _but _hurt you," the third man says with mock apology as he advances on her. "But keep begging, if you like. It _suits_ you." Quick as lightning his foot lashes out, his boot toe slamming into the small of her back, and the blow drives her to the side, she tries to twist away from it and she _screams _at the pain. Her hands slap at the ground as she tries to scramble away, and her fingers flex and tighten around a piece of stone large enough to fit comfortably in her fist. Another kick – she screams and arches her back, falling back onto the ground, wrenching for air. Another, another – they have converged on her and they are kicking her as though she can somehow survive it. She makes a ball on the ground, drawing her knees up to her chest, tucking her chin, and covering her head, screaming for them to stop. But they don't.

Finally there is a pause, in which she lies dazed on the ground a mass of throbbing, wrecked pain, while they seem to admire their handiwork.

"D-d-don't," she moans incoherently, trying to flail away from the three men, her vision sparking out from the pain seizing through her. Her whole body feels like a raw, flayed nerve. Everything hurts – _everything_. Everything is agony. They're going to _kill_ her if they keep doing this. She is going to _die_. And where Malfoy is, she has no idea, but she doesn't think he's coming to save her. It's down to her to try to keep herself alive. "Pl-plea-ease, _stop_. I'll do whatever you want! I'll do anything you want just stop hurting me _please._"

"That's right – you fucking well _will_ do what we want, whore," says the biggest of the three, and grabs Hermione by her shirt, hauling her to her feet and backhanding her across the face. Her head _snaps_ to the side and she makes a grunting moan, driven out of her by the blow. Pain sears down her spine - it feels as though it's been snapped. But her fingers are firm around the stone. She is going to die. She knows it. She is going to be beaten and raped to death in a cell in a dungeon somewhere. The man hits her again and her sounds of shock and pain are gasping and choked, wheezing exhalations. The whole left side of her face feels numbed and raw.

This is how it ends, she thinks, dizzy and sick.

"Merlin's balls, you're a pretty little thing," the man says to her, ironic considering her face is already so terribly swollen from his blows – she can feel it puffing up even more, the skin going painfully taut. He grasps her more securely by her shirt and slams her up against the cell bars, the cold iron sending agony shooting through her spine and throughout her limbs, her head knocking into a bar and making hurt ring in her skull like a bell. The man's mouth dips to her throat in a mockery of a lover, suckling hard and painful at the skin there, raising marks that she knows will bloom in vivid bruises in the hours to come, if she lives that long.

_Now_, she thinks dazed with pain and concussion.

Hermione raises her arm and _swings_ down, driving the stone into the man's head as hard as she can, which isn't half as hard as she wished it could be, but is still better than nothing. Better than her fists alone. He drops her with a groan - staggering dazed and hopefully concussed - and she lands on her feet and by a miracle they don't go out from under her. But being on her feet hardly helps – the man is only badly dazed, fallen against the bars and groaning – and his two friends are just fine. And Hermione is racked with pain and trapped still, with nowhere to go, and now they're all even angrier. Oh god. Oh Merlin. Maybe she shouldn't have fought. She skitters away from the man she has just brained, her steps unsteady and the world tilting around her, her every muscle seizing with a bone-deep pain from the vicious beating they had given her, and then…

She crumples.

Pain ricochets through her.

The sound of laughing mixed with the angry swearing of the man Hermione had hit, and then there are hands on her, rolling her onto her back, tearing at her clothing – ripping her shirt open and trying to haul her jeans down her legs. She blinks her eyes open, and between the leaping torchlight and the swirling in her head she catches only shattered, nightmarish glimpses, greying out. She begs them in slurred, desperate pleas.

"Please don't." A mouth clamps over hers, tongue sweeping sick-making over her lips and teeth. A face leers down at her, and fingers pinch her nose shut, a tongue licking at her own tongue when her mouth opens to gasp for breath. She wrenches her head away, sobbing for air. "_Please_, stop." She blinks up around her blearily and cringes in sick terror at the sight of one of the men stroking his erection as he stands and watches, and squeezes her eyes shut. She can't see. She can't. "Stop." Hands paw at her breasts through her dirtied bra. Fingers prod at her vulva through her knickers. "_Don't._" A heavy weight settles over her legs. Nausea roiling through her, can't think, can't – can't… _Please. Please don't. _She struggles pitifully.

_Please._

"She's _mine_." It's _his_ voice, cutting the air filled with deadly intent. She hears it slice through the fog and pain of her half-conscious state, and her swollen eyes force open. Hope and painfully sharp relief overwhelm her, and her breath catches in a sob in her chest. Malfoy stands in the cell door, mostly visible past the man who has been trying to get her knickers off, who scrambles up off her, kneeling between her thighs. Malfoy's wand is in his hand, and he breathes hard and rasping as if he ran all the way down here, his shoulders heaving and fringe falling messy over his eyes. He looks like he wants to _murder_ every single one of the men – he looks like he _could_, without a single bit of trouble. Her chest feels tight and taut, her heart leaping with hope hope _hope._

"You _wot?_" one of the men asks, and Malfoy takes a step forward, icy fury bright in his eyes and written in every taut line of his face.

"The girl. is. mine."

"She hit me – hit with a fuckin' _rock!_"

"That doesn't make her any less _mine_, you idiotic piece of excrement," Malfoy snarls, stalking toward Hermione and shoving one of them back away from her side. She blinks up at him, trying to say his name with lips that are bloody and twice their usual side. Pain and horror flash wretched in his eyes, like an echo of hers. "Granger," he mutters, and his voice is as sickened and horrified as the look in his eyes. _Malfoy_, she tries to say, relief maddeningly intense, making her want to shake and cry, come to pieces there on the floor. He flattens his mouth and glares at the man who is still hunched over her between her legs, paused in the act of trying to take her knickers off. "Get the _fuck_ off her."

"Why should I?" the man says, standing, tall enough that he is a good two inches taller than Malfoy, and twice the breadth. Hermione blinks muzzily up at them – they all look like giants to her from down here. She stifles the absurd urge to giggle. She thinks maybe she's in shock; her body is overflowing with pain but she feels oddly distant, now. Dazed. Floating away from it all.

"Because of this, perhaps, for starters?" Malfoy hisses, jerking his sleeve back in short tugs to show off his Dark Mark, and the man's eyes go round in shock and he takes a stumbling step back. Hermione nearly manages to curl the corners of her lips into something like a smile at the sudden fear on the man's face.

"I didn't – sorry. I didn't know you was a – a – one of them," the man apologises abjectly, shuffling backward, away from Malfoy and Hermione. "We just…we didn't think she was anyone's…"

"We had no idea. Most sorry, Mister…?" the best-spoken of the three ventures apologetically, but the expression on his face is sly and calculating and doesn't match his tone.

"Malfoy. Draco Malfoy," he bites out, looking more furious than Hermione has ever seen him, his nostrils flaring and his fists bunching at his sides, his posture braced for duelling. There is a vein throbbing at his temple, and his eyes keep flicking down to her every few heartbeats. "And yes, you had _best_ be sorry."

"We'll just be, er, going then. And no need to mention this to anyone is there?" Malfoy's eyebrow twitches upward just the faintest bit.

"I – I suppose not," he agrees, sounding reluctant, and Hermione realises just how convenient that is. If the men don't tell anyone, then – then her presence will remain a secret just that much longer. Which is what they _want._ The men all make their apologies, the smartest one chivvying the other two along hurriedly, while Malfoy stands just in front of Hermione like a guard dog. It is only when they have been gone a full thirty seconds and their footsteps no longer echo off the walls that he sheathes his wand and drops to his knees at her side, sheer panic written all over his face.

"Granger. Granger, fucking shit, what – what the _fuck_. Are you – did they…tell me what I need to fix. _Tell me._" Malfoy is frantic with his worry for her, one hand finding and holding hers very gently, the other hand tapping his wand to her more obvious wounds, sending numbness seeping welcome through them. "Did - did they - is there anything - severe?" he asks, and when she shakes her head weakly - she doesn't _think_ there is, save a concussion - Malfoy drops his wand to the floor with a clatter, and traces his fingers softly from her temple to her chin. "Fuck, what did they _do_ to you?" The hand that is curled carefully around hers tightens a little, his thumb rubbing back and forth over her palm as he kneels beside her, fingers petting softly over her hair in soothing reassurance. "Merlin, Granger, I'm so sorry I didn't get here sooner. I'm so sorry."

_It's not your _fault, Hermione wants to say, but he won't shut up in his sickened, babbled apologies to let her get a word in edgewise, and her mouth doesn't seem to want to do what her brain tells it to. And then suddenly Malfoy falters to a stop and his face goes hard and cold, and then what little colour he has drains from his complexion completely. He stares down at her in abject horror.

"Oh shit. Oh _Merlin_, I said your name in front of them. Granger, I said your _fucking name_. That's why they were so _fucking _eager to leave." His fist slams into the stone beside her head, and his eyes are stricken on hers as she gazes blurrily up at him, processing what he's just said. It takes a moment before she realises what is so terrible about him saying her name. "I've fucked it. Merlin, I've…I've _fucked_ it." His hand lifts again and his thumb drags down her right cheek, before falling to the ground beside her neck, forearm stiff against the side of her throat as he tenses in fury.

"I am so sorry." He bites his lower lip so hard that in fascinated horror she sees one of his teeth pop through the skin of his lip, and blood wells up. His hands shake as he begins to gather her into his arms, lifting her up, so that she rests against the wiry warmth of him. He smells good, like spices and pine sap instead of the excrement and burnt flesh she's smelt for days upon days, and she nestles closer to him automatically.

"It's all right, Malfoy. You – they would have killed me if you hadn't come," she whispers hoarsely, and he gives her a bitter little flash of a smile, and his voice when he speaks is hard and cold, his face very still, emotions swiftly masked.

"And now I could have killed us both. Or worse."

"…W-will he…?" she asks in a tiny little voice, thinking of what could be to come, and terrified despite her best attempts to be brave. Malfoy knows what she means. He carefully reaches down, clearly telegraphing his intentions, and tries to wriggle up her jeans with a shrug at her question. He seems brittle right now, as if he will snap if someone bends him too far. There is no give; he is a knife blade and she does not know if that is what they need right now. But as before, Malfoy is her only hope. And for the second time, he has risked his life to save her. She buttons her jeans with fumbling, clumsy fingers, and then turns her swollen face into his chest, clutching at his shirt and breathing into him. He smells like somewhere warm and good, somewhere not here.

"I don't know. I might – I might still…I might still be able to pull this off. I don't know." Malfoy stammers when he speaks, holding Hermione close to him, his heart thundering and the slightest tremble to his body. He shifts his grip on her, scrubbing his hand angrily through his fine, pale hair, his brow furrowed with crawling thoughts. "My master – he's going to be furious that I hid your presence from him, but…we might not be dead yet, Granger. We might have a chance." He nibbles at his lip, eyes far away and filled with desperate, chaotic grasping for a way out, before he focuses them sharp and nearly-manic on her, and begins casting healing charms again. "…Maybe."

* * *

><p>They wake Hermione to fear and pain, when they drag her out of sleep and her cell, and she is aware of very little as they drag a bag over her head and take her…somewhere else. The floor cold under her stumbling, dragging feet as she is hauled along blindly, loud, cruel voices, rough hands on her arms and her hair, pain blooming sharp and bright as they manhandle her without a care. She can't make sense of anything. Dark beneath the bag and her breath makes the air too hot and she feels like she's going to suffocate, and cold floor under her bare feet, and bruising shoves into door frames and walls, and what is going on? <em>They know<em>, she thinks dully, stupidly. _They know._ Terror shoots through her muddled mind in sharp, cold spears. _What are they going to do?_ She doesn't want to die. She doesn't want them to hurt her. Terror cuts at her. Her breath comes too-fast in sobs.

After a bewildering journey that drags and shoves her up stairs and along corridors, Hermione is flung blindly, dizzy and frightened, onto hard wooden floor. The breath woofs out of her, and then she rolls and scrambles onto her back, tugging frantically at the bag tied over her head as the sound of a door slamming shut thunks loud and flat. Then there are hands on her head, and the bag, and it's ripped away unceremoniously. She is left blinking up at Malfoy and gasping in breaths of cool, fresh air as he hovers over her, pale and worried as he helps her sit up, and without seeming to think about it, carefully pushes a fall of her lank, tangled hair off her face. He tucks it behind her ear with a tender little motion, before sitting back on his heels, shooting worried glances at the door.

"Are you all right? Did they hurt you?" She shakes her head no, squinting against the bright light as she stares at Malfoy. He is dishevelled, in shirt sleeves and trousers, his hair mussed, and the right side of his mouth is swollen fat and red raw. She looks around, trying to get her bearings; they are in a small bedroom that looks like servant quarters from the plain walls and lack of any furniture bar a narrow bed and a battered looking chest of drawers.

"They know," she says numbly, stupidly begging him to deny it. To tell her that they were going to be okay. Malfoy sighs wearily and rubs the side of his hand over his forehead, still crouching by her, steadying his balance with the fingertips of one hand, eyes clear and grim.

"Yeah. They know." He corrects himself. "Or rather, they know that I've been keeping your presence a secret. They don't know anything else." Hermione frowns at him. What difference does that make? She asks him that, and he worries at his sore lip - nibbling it and wincing, then probing over it carefully with his tongue - before he finally answers. "They don't know why I kept you to myself - except that Theo knows I went down to the dungeons to f-fuck you," he says with reluctance, his gaze sliding away from hers and a pink flush rising on his cheeks. Hermione stares at him, eyes going wide and round.

"You - you - you mean…?"

"I don't see that we have a choice but to play it that way with - me, um, _wanting_ you, and hope that maybe…maybe he lets me have you?" Malfoy says awkwardly, pink flush darkening to red, and Hermione recoils from the thought of being perceived as some kind of - of Mudblood _sex slave_, but it seems like the only workable solution at this point. A small hope, where before there was none. It'll have to do, she supposes, stomach turning at the thought of what might happen if Malfoy couldn't convince Voldemort to let him _have her_. Then Malfoy tenses and snaps her out of horrible imaginings, grabbing her arm and hauling her to her feet. He propels her backwards, into the small space between the bed and the chest of drawers, and she is too startled to resist at first.

"What -?" she asks breathless as he tries to shove her down into a crouch, and his eyes are bright with fear as he looks toward the door again, the muscles in his jaw flexing and bunching and his expression turning determined and grim.

"Footsteps. People are coming. You - you need to stay down here, you understand me, Granger? _Stay down_. Don't draw any attention to yourself - it won't do any fucking good. Yeah? _Stay fucking down._" He fixes his gaze on her - burning bright and silver and Hermione almost forgets to agree, and then she nods swiftly and hurriedly as the lock in the door turns, and Malfoy moves quickly away from her, standing before the door his face and posture assuming arrogance and irritation. It's a transformation that makes him look entirely different, and Hermione blinks at it in startlement as she huddles down as he'd ordered her to. And then two large, solid men shuffle into the room, filling it up. They look enough like their sons that Hermione recognises them.

Crabbe and Goyle Sr. She remembers how Malfoy said they hated him, and winces, knowing in her bones what is coming. Malfoy lifts his chin, look every inch an arrogant, entitled tosser. "What the fuck do you two idiots want? Looking for a nice quite room in which to get off with each other? 'Fraid this one's taken." Hermione wants to cover her eyes at that, when she sees the rage transforming the two men's faces, contorting their expressions. One of them closes his hands meaningfully into fists, and his knuckles crack ominously. They haven't seen her yet; Malfoy commands all their attention, and Hermione stays very, very still and silent.

"Shuddup up, _Malfoy_," Crabbe snarls, but the other just laughs, angry and nasty, evidently not goaded into thoughtless reaction by Malfoy's taunt.

"We're _here_ to have a bit of fun before you've got to go off and explain yourself to the Dark Lord. _That's_ why we're here, you pathetic piece of shit." Goyle takes a step forward, and Malfoy's jaw clenches and relaxes. He nods then, and spread his hands out from his sides, palms facing the two Death Eaters. It is surrender, and acceptance, and Hermione feels suddenly very, very sick.

"Go on then. Get your kicking in," Malfoy says with a calm sort of resignation, and Crabbe growls under his breath and moves forward frighteningly fast for his size, driving one fist rib-crackingly hard into Malfoy's diaphragm. A groaning huff of air is driven out of Malfoy as he bends double and clutches his middle, wheezing helplessly for air that won't come, his face reddening and the cords in his neck standing out as his mouth moves like a fish out of water. Crabbe laughs, and grabs Malfoy by his fringe, hauling him mostly upright before punching him again, in the exact same spot. Malfoy doesn't even have enough breath to make a noise now, and Hermione holds back a whimper, her fingers pressing hard to her lips. She feels like a coward, crouching here unnoticed, but Malfoy had _said_, and it won't help them for her to be hurt too.

Goyle gets in on the act next, with rabbit quick punches to Malfoy's lower back as Crabbe holds him still - Goyle is aiming for his kidneys, Hermione supposes weakly, nauseated and horrified as Malfoy cries out soundlessly, still red-faced and unable to get a breath. Then Crabbe yanks Malfoy over double and slams his knee into Malfoy's abdomen, before dragging him upright again by his hair, and spitting in his face, before shoving him back into Goyle's grasp. Malfoy gets his breath back finally, as he falls to the ground after Goyle hits him in the face - enough breath to groan in pain at least, as he tries to get to his feet, barely making it to all fours, spitting blood and trembling.

"Whassa matter, Malfoy? Not having fun," Crabbe mocks, before putting the boot in - kicking Malfoy hard in the stomach so that he collapses back onto the floor with a cry. They both kick him then - heavy-toed boots slamming into his legs and body and head, and he curls into a ball with his arms around his head, trying to protect himself, and Hermione can't watch any longer.

"Stop!" She cries the words out filled with fury as she scrambles to her feet, and Crabbe and Goyle Sr. turn to face her with leers spreading over their features, and Malfoy lifts his head, face smeared with blood from his nose, and his features are cast in hopeless horror. _No_, he mouths desperately, but it's too late now. They've noticed her, at last.

"Well, hello there, Mudblood," Crabbe says, still grinning as he takes a step toward her, and Hermione's skin crawls. "I didn't notice you there, pretty little thing." Her stomach lurches and she takes a step back, shoulder blades pressing into the wall. Oh Merlin. Maybe she should have just stayed quiet, like Malfoy told her. But at least - at least they've stopped hurting him. She stares past Crabbe and Goyle, at Malfoy, who is struggling to get back up. She wants to shut her eyes against the sight of Malfoy bloodied and gasping and staggering to his feet, face shaped with pain, but she can't look away. "You want us to stop hurting him, do you? And why exactly would _that _be?"

Oh shit. Hermione hasn't thought this through at all, she realises belatedly. Malfoy is staring at her with that frozen horror, and she doesn't know what to _say._ "You…you shouldn't hurt _anyone_," she says in a small, breathy voice, pressing herself so hard back against the wall she's surprised she hasn't melded with it. "It's _wrong. _You - you shouldn't…"

"Well aren't you just _adorable_, with your funny little Mudblood morals," Goyle mocks, and then his hand shoots out and slams around her throat. She gags and struggles on instinct, hands coming up to claw at the Death Eater's meaty hand. It does nothing. Panic seizes her as she gasps for air and gets thread bits of it, but still keeps feeling dizzier and dizzier. Her head feels too small. Too tight. His grip is cutting off the supply of blood, Hermione realises as she claws at Crabbe's hand. Her head feels too _full_, and spots dance in front of her eyes, everything feels heavy and dark and…

"She's _mine_," Malfoy snarls, and she can hear laughter too-loud and yet far away at once. She blinks, her struggles weakening fast, seeing through darkening vision Malfoy limp and stagger toward Crabbe and Goyle Sr., his bloodied face haughty and possessive. Crabbe spins, dragging Hermione with him as he turns and _throwing_ her to the ground, and she hits hard. Pain shoots through her neck and spine as she bounces and rolls to a halt at Malfoy's feet, hands going to her throat as sweet blessed air flows freely into her lungs, and the darkened vision and dizziness retreats, her blood rushing to where it should be. She clutches at Malfoy's ankle, and he kicks her off roughly and it feels like a punch in the gut, that rejection. That lack of protection. It takes her a minute to realise: he can't act like he cares. "She's _mine_, you stupid fucks, and I swear to Merlin I will kill you both before I let you touch what belongs to me."

Crabbe begins to say something as Hermione tries to struggle into a sitting position at Malfoy's feet, but a banging at the door drowns out his voice. "The Dark Lord's ready to see 'em now," a rough, dangerous looking woman says as she swings the door open, a scowl affixed to her face. "Hurry up, you two. Get 'em out there, 'afore the Lord gets impatient." Hermione can feel the tension drain out of Malfoy at that - it was only a temporary reprieve, but it was one they dearly needed. Crabbe and Goyle Sr. seem frustrated, but they nod to the woman and grunt agreement. "He says give Malfoy his wand back," the woman adds, and Crabbe and Goyle Sr. seem even _less_ happy at that, but Crabbe slaps Malfoy's wand into the younger Death Eater's outstretched hand.

"You're fucking lucky, you blood-filth bitch," Goyle growls as he grabs Hermione by the hair and wrenches her to her feet. She shrieks and tears spring to her eyes, stumbling to get her feet under her to lessen the tearing on her scalp. Crabbe grabs Malfoy's arm and shoves him out the door first, and Goyle drags Hermione after them. She swallows hard as they're hurried roughly down long, rich carpeted corridors, her heart pounding faster and faster in her chest. She tells herself that whatever happens, she needs to be strong. She needs to be strong. She's a Gryffindor. She's Hermione Granger. She can do this. She _has_ to get through it. She won't let them break her, no matter what - she refuses to give them the satisfaction.

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><p><em>Leave a review to feed the muse :)<em>


	3. Part Three

**Edit:** As of the **28th of April 2015**, I have made major changes to this fic, thanks to constructive criticism by a reader. Scenes have been added, and the tone and content of many existing scenes have been altered or expanded upon. I hope that such alterations give a better picture of the dynamic between Draco and Hermione, which previously was not illustrated in a great deal of detail because I was trying to keep this fic short. However, the subject material does not lend itself to brevity, it seems - and in order to make a proper go of achieving what I set out to achieve, I have had to make some changes. I _recommend_ skimming back through the fic from the beginning before reading on, but doing so is not _necessary_. I hope you find the changes I've made to be positive ones!

Liss xx

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><p><span><strong>Part Three<strong>

The floor under Hermione's knees is hard, and the air around her is hot, scented heavily, and stiflingly close; all wrong, _wrong_. She wants to go mad – to scream and sob and rip her own hair out. Only Malfoy's presence, standing beside her, is helping her stay in control of herself. And from the looks he keeps flashing her that she catches sight of out of the corner of her eye, he seems to feel much the same way about her. When his hand curls in her hair almost comfortingly – but clearly meant to show he still feels superior and is not a Muggle lover – it actually makes her feel _safe_. That is how terrified she is, right now. He is her only hope at protection, now that Voldemort has waved aside her usefulness as a hostage, or bait – quite cavalierly, she thinks, ridiculously almost _insulted_ that she is not important enough to merit a special status as prisoner.

The huge room is filled with people; one of Voldemort's infamous revels is ongoing, and Hermione supposes she and Malfoy are supposed to be part of the entertainment. Dead, dying, and brutalised Muggles and Muggleborns are scattered throughout the room in a manner that Voldemort no doubt thinks is artistic. The knees of Hermione's jeans are sodden with congealing blood, from a body of a child that lies nearby, skinned and tossed to the floor like a naked doll. It is probably the worst one of them all.

Hermione has been trying very hard not to look at it – staring at Malfoy's boots on the bloodied floor instead, or sneaking the occasional glance up at his battered face. No hint of reassurance on it now, as he bows his head, meeting her eyes as he makes his obeisance to his lord. He is the very picture of a remorseful, loyal Death Eater - perfectly obedient and apologetic.

Voldemort has been lecturing him in that eerie, high voice for long enough now that Hermione's knees are a mass of soreness, and her still-wounded body aches all over. It seems he doesn't care so much that Malfoy might 'want Hermione for himself', as Malfoy has allowed Voldemort to believe – no, what bothers Voldemort is the deceit, apparently. The omitting of the truth. The dishonesty of it all. Hermione wants to strangle the Dark Lord, who lounges on his self-appointed throne and waxes poetic on and on about how _disappointed_ he is in Malfoy, his wonderfully promising young protégée.

"I'm afraid, Draco, my dear boy, that for keeping the truth from me, there must be consequences." Malfoy's breath jerks in audibly, and he shuts his eyes, his bruised jaw clenching as he nods. The injuries Crabbe and Goyle Sr. inflicted on him are blossoming into bruises and lumps now, and he looks like he's been beaten half to death.

"Yes, my Lord. Of course," he says quietly, and Hermione's heart aches at the devastated terror in Malfoy's eyes, and she is so _angry_.

"_Crucio!_" Malfoy doesn't flinch, or cower like so many would. But when the spell hits, he doubles over and falls to his hands and knees, a scream torn out of his throat, and Hermione stuffs her hands against her mouth and bites down on her knuckles, horrified. "_Crucio!_"

Malfoy crumples on his face in the congealing blood that coats the floor as his limbs jerk and fail him, and his mouth is stretched wide in a silent scream, his eyes are screwed shut and helpless little _'ngh ngh ngh'_ sounds pant from his throat. Hermione kneels there beside him as still as a china doll, and she want to do something – to shelter him from the pain, to stop Voldemort, to _make it stop_. But if she says anything in Malfoy's defence it might only make his case worse; Voldemort has used Legilimency on Malfoy, who must know Occlumency to have hidden the truth from his master. Hermione does not know it, and if she draws attention to herself she could give them both away completely.

So she bows her head and shuts her eyes, holding her hands in fists at her sides as Malfoy screams and writhes and gasps beside her. She feels like the worst kind of person, letting it go on without speaking up, but there is nothing she can _do_. Tears paint her cheeks, and she bites her tongue so hard that it fills her mouth with coppery blood-tainted saliva. And Malfoy screams, crumpled on his face in the blood, his body wrenched in a rictus of agony that goes on and on. Hermione finds herself wishing Malfoy's parents were present – perhaps they would step forward and try to help their son – but they are _not_, and Malfoy is alone.

When it finally ends, Malfoy is still and silent, and Hermione cannot help but wonder if he is dead. Her palms have been bloodied by the gouges of her nails, and her body is knotted with tension. It runs out of her when Malfoy lets out a whimpering, hacking cough, and twitches on the floor; her shoulders slump and she exhales heavily. He is alive. Thank Merlin.

His fingers flex on the sticky floor and then _push_, shoving him up onto his hands and knees, and wherever the blood is not smeared dark crimson his skin is so ashen it is nearly grey, and his hands tremble as if palsied. His eyes meet hers for a moment, and his gaze is thunderstorms and silver, unfocused and half-wild.

He stands with an effort, swaying on his feet with his head down. "Thank you, my Lord. I - I shall not fail you again," he says weakly, and Hermione wants to scream that no, no, he shouldn't be _thanking _the monster, even though she knows that he has to.

And then Voldemort says it.

"Perhaps I should have the mudblood killed, as an added consequence. To ensure you learn your lesson."

Malfoy jerks his head up for the first time, and shakes it in a frantic, frightened 'no'. "My Lord – My Lord, _please_."

Hermione's heart thunders and she stares down at the blood pooled around her knees blankly, her vision blurring out. Death – death would not be the worst fate that could befall her, she supposes, and then wishes she hadn't thought that only a moment later.

"Should I have her be the star of our evening's entertainment, then? Let everybody have a turn?" Voldemort suggests airily, and Hermione can hear the strain trembling in Malfoy's voice.

"My Lord…I – I want her, my Lord. For – for myself. Please. She is…"

"Yes," Voldemort encourages with a disturbingly gossipy tone to him, as though he is a fascinated teenage girl talking about crushes. Hermione stifles a hysterical, whooping laugh. "Yes, she is _what?_ What is she exactly, Draco? We are all _ears_."

"She is the only person who ever managed to best me consistently at Hogwarts, My Lord," Malfoy said as though the words were being torn out of him, and Hermione risked a glance up – he looked furious and sullen and terrified at once, but everything filtered through an overlay of abject respect for his master. "She was the mudblood _bitch_ who made me look bad. And now – now I want her to be _mine, _so I can put her in her place." He _grates_ it out full of hate and loathing, and his shaking hand clasps in her hair, he looks down at her with an odd, possessive little sneer, and Hermione has to suppress a trickle of fear.

Malfoy is a bloody excellent actor.

"Very well," Voldemort says, perking up, amusement cruel on his inhuman features as he stares at Malfoy and Hermione. "If you want the mudblood to be yours and no one else's, then claim her as that, in front of everyone here, so there can be no doubt. _You_ can be the evening's entertainment. After all, this is a revel, is it not?" There is a brief, heavy silence. Hermione's head spins, and she feels her gorge rise along with her panic. Claim her as his? Evening's entertainment? She _knows_ what that means without having to be told.

She stares up at Voldemort in stark, helpless fear, and sees him gesture with his wand for an answer from Malfoy. Her eyes flick to Malfoy - his eyes dull and his limbs shaky from the Cruciatus, the blood from the floor drying dark on his face and his clothes. His shoulders are sunk in defeat, and his lower lip trembles briefly before he flattens his mouth.

"Yes, my Lord," Malfoy says quietly at last, strain running raw through his voice. "It is."

"Well then, let us have some revelry!" Voldemort cries cheerfully, like some kind of terrible child, his high voice crawling with eerie satisfaction. He stands, gliding across the floor in bare feet, carefully avoiding the swathes of blood with delicate steps. "That settles it. My loyal followers, please, gather around! We have a rare entertainment this evening; our young Mister Malfoy shall have what I believe is his first _proper_ participation at a revel." Voldemort glances over at Malfoy for confirmation as he waves his wand, summoning everyone to move closer, and Hermione realises that it is going to happen. Malfoy can do nothing to stop it.

Hermione's breath is stuttering and dying in her chest. She is panicking. No. No. _Nononono. _This cannot happen. She stares down at the blood of strangers beneath her knees with staring, blank eyes. _No. No._ She does not know if it is better or worse, that it is Malfoy. She wonders if he is just as afraid, just as sickened by the thought of being forced to...do it to her. Voldemort will be raping both of them, she realises, although it is hard to see things from Malfoy's perspective, tumbling headfirst into mad horror as she is. It is hard not to see him as the enemy.

"Yes, my Lord. It is the first time at a revel," Malfoy says in a hollow, lifeless voice that does not hide his feelings well, and his fingers jerk involuntarily in Hermione's hair. She is shaking – shivering all over as though she is having a fit, and the room is too small, everything is too close, and people push around with goblets full of drink, laughing with cruel faces, and Malfoy's fingers pull unintentionally at her hair.

"Well, what _fun_," Voldemort enthuses, clapping his hands together delightedly, and that is when Hermione snaps.

She rips her head from Malfoy's grasp, thin straggles of hair coming out and a stifled scream erupting from her lips. She scrambles away, stumbling to her feet and running. She doesn't _think_, isn't _thinking_, just wanting to get away. Get away. Get away.

She makes it exactly twelve steps before the first person grabs her. She thrashes and screams and bites and claws against multiple people, her fists and feet flying, writhing like an eel as people drag her back to Malfoy, who stands motionless, a statue. She stares up at his blood smeared face as hands hold her by her hair and shoulders on her knees before him, her expression horror-struck and raw, and his echoing that. Her eyes plead hopelessly with him.

"Malfoy…" Hermione whispers, as people jeer and cheer and roar around them, and Voldemort watches placidly from his resumed position on his throne. "Malfoy, _please_."

"Don't run," he tells her dull and tight, and she stares at him mutely, _shaking._ "If you run, they'll only bring you back to me. Because you are _mine_, you _filthy little mudblood whore_," he tells her, voice become a vicious snarl. The back of his hand snaps across her already swollen, hurting face and she yelps woundedly and struggles helplessly against him, sobbing. She fights him at first. She can't help it. Writhing under him. Grunting and making sobbing animal sounds as she tries to get away, clawing and thrashing until other, strange hands grab her wrists, and her ankles. They pin her spread-eagle to the floor and she fights and heaves against them, but only succeeds in exhausting herself, and gaining a hard slap across the face that makes her choke. Her already swollen face balloons further, the skin feeling so hot and so tight. When she screams in rage and tries to struggle some more, she is hit again, and again, and she opens her eyes to see Malfoy there, his face cold and his hand sweeping down. It connects with a crack and she flinches and weeps at the pain.

There is nothing she can do. It makes her want to die. To be anywhere but here. She doesn't want him to hit her again; she sobs, wet and heaving with defeat, and goes limp, eyes shut and limbs heavy. There is nothing she can do to stop it. Instead she shuts her eyes and tries to wish it all away. To wish she was _not here_. That she couldn't feel it. She wishes she'd taken the potion Malfoy had given to the other prisoners, so that she didn't care. The hands let go of her limbs, but she doesn't fight.

"_You are mine_," Malfoy tells her, and his hands tear her filthy, ragged shirt from her shoulders as the hands of the crowd let her go, and cuts away her ragged bra. Her breasts fall free, and his eyes are horrified and sickened. "You don't have a fucking _choice_." Hermione remains enough presence of mind to know that isn't just a show for the Death Eaters - he's telling _her_. Her gaze darts about desperately – pointlessly – but the Death Eaters and their hangers on are jammed around them, and Malfoy is right: they will only drag her back. They don't have a choice, either of them. It is this or their torture, and eventual, terrible death. This is better, this is preferable, _this is_ _hell. _Hermione lets her head roll to one side, her arms go slack, and she doesn't fight him anymore. She lets him do it, and tries very, very hard to drift away, mentally – to be anywhere but there, lying stripped bare and pliable under Malfoy's hands. But she can't. He hurts her, and the pain keeps her _there_, present as he _does things._

He is full of awful, terrible words, and his hands maul and hurt her perfunctorily – just enough to satisfy the watching crowd, and no more. It is still far, far too much – the revelers are bloodthirsty and cruel. Hermione just lies there and shuts her eyes, feeling waves of nausea swim over her, cutting though the pain of what she already feels from earlier injuries, and what he does to her now. She wonders if it is worse for him, to have to do it; to be forced to participate actively, to be the one inflicting it upon someone else instead of just enduring it. _No_,she thinks dizzily. It can't be worse than what she is feeling. His fingers pinch and twist at her nipples until she screams from it, her eyes screwed shut and her hands fists at her sides, and she doesn't care how he feels anymore. She hates him anyway.

She squeezes her eyes shut so hard she can see colours bursting behind them and clenches her teeth. She can _feel_ him as he drags her trousers and knickers off. He is heavy and the scent of his sweat fills her nose, his skin slides over hers as he settles over her, his fingers intruding on her genitals, rough and slick, coated with his own saliva. The feel of that slick slide makes her want to be _sick_, and she tries to clamp her thighs shut but he is between them and she _can_'t.

"_No_ - please don't. Please don't. _Please_." The words come out of her unbidden, on huffs of air forced out of her by her sobbing breaths, and she wants to scream. Her palms sweat and her breath is choking and catching in her throat, and if she could crawl out of her own skin she would. He is inside her and around her, and she feels disgusting and disgusted. _Get off me! _She wants to flay herself alive, to tear her skin off, to not be here. _Stop. Stop stop stop. Get off me. Don't touch me there don't touch me like that stop it oh my god please. _Her breath comes in juddering gasps. "_Stoppp_. Please." Her nails claw into her palms; a sharp, welcome pain that she fixates on. "Please." It's a desperate whine low in her throat. "_Pleeeease_ stop." But he keeps groping her and hurting her and _violating_ her and he won't stop. He won't fucking stop and - and -

It takes Malfoy far too long to get an erection, and Hermione finds herself wishing at one point that he just _would_ so they could get it over with, just get it over with, just get it done and gone and… But he is swearing under his breath ferociously as he tries and tries to get hard, sweating and panting on top of her, his frustration palpable and desperate. His forehead drops to pillow on one of her deeply bruised breasts, and he spits and gasps a slew of hateful curses, his body settling half naked on her completely nude one. Hermione flinches beneath the heavy heat of him at first, but when he doesn't hurt her this time, there is nothing terrible in his body on hers. It is a brief reprieve, in a way, covered from the sight of the revelers, a brief moment without pain and violation.

Hermione lies there, and all she can think now, with hatred boiling through her skin, is that Malfoy's performances issues could ruin _everything_. And how _dare_ he. How dare he hurt her like this and then _not be able to finish it._

"I can't..." he begs wrecked against the soft, bruised swell of one breast. There is a sob in his voice, and wetness on her breast that could be his sweat, or his tears, or both. Hermione hates him for making her say it, even if it isn't his fault any more than it is hers.

"Haff to," she murmurs slurred angry at him with ruined lips, barely understandable, urgent. "Jus' _do_ i'." Everything in her shudders sickly at saying it, but she does because she doesn't want to die. She doesn't. It hurts when Malfoy pushes into her at last – she is dry, and tense with fear and pain, and he is awkward and rough as he forces his way into her. Her face scrunches with pain as she cries out, and her fingers scrape on the floor. He makes a sound somewhere between a sob and a sickened groan and thrusts quick and hard without finesse, and the breath huffs out of her, raggedly keeping time. Thank Merlin he does not try to make it pleasant for her.

She opens her eyes and blinks up at the high ceiling as he thrusts; staring at the torchlight burning in the chandelier above, at the glittering crystals it is adorned with that catch the light. Malfoy is totally silent except for his heavy drags for air, and Hermione looks up past his shoulder at the lights, flashes of prism colours and bright white filling her blurring vision as she weeps.

Malfoy cums in her, when he finishes – with a soft little grunt of pleasure that she can tell he tries very hard to stifle, that burns into her brain, that she will never forget. Hermione looks at him then, and his eyes are just inches from hers and so pale surrounded by the blood drying on his face, and when their stares meet he squeezes his eyes tightly closed and turns his face away slightly, gasping in a broken breath. Shame is written sharp on his face, shame and pain and a kind of self-hatred Hermione never wants to feel. It is hard to _hate_ him, when he is hurting too. In the end, it is just so fucking _sad_, and perhaps the very worst thing about it is the people _watching_, the humiliation of having them jeer at her, cheer over her _despoiling_, over her _punishment_. It is awful. Hermione hates them all, so much.

Then Malfoy drags her to her knees, and his cum and traces of her own blood trickle slowly down the inside of her thighs. "She is _mine_," Malfoy says to the room at large, coated in dried blood like some barbarian, hooking his shorts up over his erection, gripping her hair like she is a trophy as she sways naked on her knees beside him, dazed and lost in the fog of shock. "She is _mine_." A growl edges his voice, and no one argues with him – some clap and cheer, but most just turn away, to lose themselves in whatever depravities and horrors they had been indulging in earlier. Voldemort smiles thinly and waves his hand – apparently indicating that they are free to go, because they do then.

Malfoy lets go of Hermione's hair and pulls her to her feet by her arm, leading her stumbling from the room in her nakedness, his pace too quick for her because _everything_ hurts now, even her insides. Her feet trip numbly on the floor and her head hangs limply, hair falling in lank handfuls around her face. She doesn't know…what just happened? Oh god. Oh _god._ She can't process it. Can't… A sob escapes her. As soon as Malfoy shuts the door to the hall where the revelry is taking place he drops her arm and staggers a step back, clutching at the wall beside him and bending double, retching dryly, gasping and shuddering. Hermione just stands there numbly, hugging herself. She wants to crumble to the ground and shiver into a million screaming pieces, and she can't _do_ that so instead she stands very, very still, the air wisping cold over every inch of her naked skin.

Malfoy looks like he wants to say something when he straightens, but his lips move stutteringly without anything coming out, and then he ducks his head and shoves his hand rough through his fringe, pushing it back. He makes a hesitant half-step toward her after another few heartbeats pass. Hermione flinches back on instinct, feeling so horrifically exposed and violated; naked and cold and trembling, with his cum sliding down her thighs, pinked with blood from the abrasions she can feel so acutely. She doesn't trust him now; her mind is fuzzed with concussion and shock, and her body remembers only the trauma he has just inflicted on it. She stares at him from behind strings of her lank hair with shoulders hunched and arms hugging herself – a beaten dog expecting a blow. Her breath sucks in and out, and the beginnings of wild, horrified sobs building in her chest.

Malfoy makes a small, harsh noise in his throat and drops his gaze to the floor, shame and self-loathing radiating off him like heat from flames. He swallows, throat bobbing, and then strips off his bloodied shirt, skin pale and stained faintly in smears and streaks with blood. Hermione makes herself stand still and doesn't cry out or cringe away as he very gently swings the shirt to settle around her shoulders. He tugs and pulls with painfully gentle, tender motions, fussing absurdly but getting her covered up – the hem of the shirt settles at mid-thigh. A sob rattles out of her at the gentleness of his hands, and she is ashamed that something so small could mean so much to her right now. Her shoulders heave and there is a cracking pain in her chest as the avalanche of sobs trapped inside her threatens to burst out. She chokes on one and whimpers, and her chest heaves and judders frantically as she tries to keep control.

"Not here," Malfoy says very, very tightly, shaking just as much as her, and his eyes are wet and stricken – he smudges the back of his hand over one, and presses his lips so hard together that they go white. He goes on a moment later, and his voice breaks a little in the middle; urgent and soft and broken. "My room is – is this way. You'll be…safe, there. Just…keep it together, Granger. Just until we get to my room. Okay?"

Malfoy edges carefully closer to her and reaches out as if she is a wild animal he is approaching. Hermione feels she should say something but doesn't know _what _as he gently snugs her fingers in his grip, to lead her with him. Her skin crawls all over at the touch, but she pads alongside him numbly and tells herself over and over that _he is not the enemy_. Malfoy is not the one to blame. Not really. The enemy is Voldemort, the one who forced them to…who made Malfoy do it…and _Malfoy_ didn't want to either, and he was a victim too, wasn't he? - and… Hermione doesn't even know. How is she supposed to handle this? How is she supposed to…? A sob hitches out of her throat, and Malfoy's eyes turn down to her, worried.

"It's just a little further, Granger.

"And – and then what? Then what, Malfoy? Then everything will be magically better?" she asks in a thick, strained voice full of a wretched bitterness, and hugs her free arm around herself tightly below her bruised breasts; still feeling as though she might shatter apart at any moment, still incapable of wrapping her head around even the thought of processing what had just happened. She sways on her feet and another sob shakes out of her. She wants to curl into a tiny ball and cry until she is wrung out and empty; nothing left. Malfoy hisses through his teeth and then shakes his head, hollow-eyed and ashen beneath the blood smears.

"No. I wish it could be, but…no." Malfoy's eyes sweep her face anxiously as he reaches out and grips a bit of the shirt, tugging her gently around a corner, his eyes darting about - on the alert for others she supposes. He will try to protect her; Hermione knows that. She does. She believes him. He just can't protect her well enough. He keeps talking, perhaps trying to distract them both until they reach the relatively safety of his room. "There's - there's a bath, though. And it'll be safe, for now. You won't have to worry about being hur–"

"Don't, Malfoy," she interrupts him harshly, her voice clogged with tears. "Please don't."

"Then you have to _move_," he begs her, hand slide down to grip her finger tips and tug as she refuses to walk, her legs feeling stiff and numb, the insides of them traced disgusting with his cum. She can't seem to take another step; everything hurts and she is filthy and disgusting and _violated_ and his hand is hot and sweaty around hers, and she wants to _scream_. She wants to just disappear. Cease to exist.

"I can't," she whispers to the floor, wiping blood-stained saliva from her lower lip. Malfoy makes a sound that is somehow frustrated, frightened, and urgent all at once, and pulls at her again, yanking Hermione a step or two down the hall. She feels stupidly like a horse, balking in sheer, stubborn terror and confusion.

"_Please_. Granger. You have to. Just keep it together. Just until we get to my room. But I can't…if we're seen and I'm being n-nice to you…I can't. They expect me to _hurt_ you." Malfoy's voice wobbles and his fingers spasm around Hermione's; she looks up at him through her hair to see his features crumpling with revolted horror as he begs her to move. "I. I – I don't want to hurt you again," he begs her like a confession, and Hermione's stomach lurches at the pitiful desperation in his voice. She stares at him for a long, hard moment, her heart striking quick in her chest and his breath ragged little noises, his features written in desperation and blood. She takes a step, like a dam breaking, and Malfoy shudders out a sigh of relief, falling in beside her and just a little ahead, leading her as quickly as she will stumble.

"I'm sor–" he begins as they turn a corner, and he is shaking and shocky and his chin is trembling and his eyes are shining wet as he glances down at her – brimming with tears he blinks back and rimmed around red and swollen. She looks down at her bare feet padded limping on the cold stones.

"_Malfoy_." Hermione doesn't know if she can handle an apology, and she doesn't know if he can handle apologising. Besides, the small, small part of her brain that is still thinking clearly doesn't want him to apologise for doing what he had to do keep her alive. And that is a thought that threatens to rip her apart – she wants to be able to just _hate _him, the one who did this to her, and she _can't_ because he was a victim too. It is all too much for her – for both of them.

"–ry…" Malfoy finishes anyway – as if he couldn't help himself, as if he had to say it for the sake of his sanity, and Hermione clenches her jaw, and bites back her hysteria and blind rage. It is not his fault, she tells herself, over and over. He is sorry because he didn't want to either, because he didn't want to hurt her; she understands that in her head, but it doesn't change how she _feels_. It didn't change how it felt. How…how everything is ruined and wrong and she feels filthy now, so filthy she'll never be clean again .How could she be? After that, after what he _did. _A woman swathed in an apron rounds a corner toward them, head down and scurrying, and Hermione shrinks back behind Malfoy in a pointless search for protection.

"It's just a servant," Malfoy mutters as the woman rushes past, but that doesn't ease Hermione's panicked breathing. She reaches out and clutches onto Malfoy's hand tightly, purposely digging her ragged nails into his palm hard enough to bruise, and he winces but doesn't say a word about it. "We're nearly there," is all he says, quiet and hoarse, as she follows close behind and beside him, her hand clinging in his. She doesn't answer, and they go the rest of the way through the corridors in a taut, strained silence, hands snugged hot and sweaty together, his shirt warm and wet with blood around her shoulders.

* * *

><p>Hermione hits him, when the door to his bedroom swings shut behind them with a heavy click – Malfoy turns to face her with his mouth just opening to speak, and before he can say a word she slaps him in the face as hard as she can. She doesn't mean to, doesn't think about it…it just happens. Malfoy's head snaps to the side and he sucks in a sharp little breath and winces, but otherwise he is still. Her face crumples with rage – he <em>raped<em> her and she doesn't give a shit that he had no choice, he still did it, and – she…she is so angry and violated and _ashamed_. And if Hermione doesn't exorcise that pent up emotion she feels like she will tear her own skin off. So she slaps Malfoy again, harder, and he still does nothing in response and she _screams_ wordlessly at him, fists bunched up in rage.

She slams both her fists into his chest, and Malfoy rocks on his feet, stumbling back into the door with a pained grunt – but still he does nothing to stop her, nothing to protect himself. Hermione stares up into his bloodied face, wanting to hiss expressions of hatred and loathing at him, wanting to so badly to blame him, to fling all her pain and hatred and rage at him. But the words die on her tongue, and her anger toward him withers to a hollow emptiness in a moment. Malfoy's eyes are bleak. She lets her fists fall limply to her sides and sucks in a breath, looking away from him because it hurts to see that he hurts too. She doesn't want to see that.

They stand there silently for a moment, awkward and hollow, and Hermione almost wants to apologise for hitting Malfoy but the words won't come. So she just stands – a clockwork toy that has wound down. She doesn't know what to do, so she does nothing at all. She is frozen by trauma and indecision, her brain numbed and lost, and heart _hurting_, and it is so, so awful.

"What do you need?" Malfoy breaks the silence at last, straightening and pushing away from the door. Her handprints still stand livid on his cheek. His eyes are dreadfully, horribly ashamed. "What do you want?" Hermione stares blindly at his bare, pale chest as she turns the questions around and around in her head. He gave her a choice. She has a _choice_. It feels nearly alien after having been given none this past week or more, but also so, so good. She loves him for giving it to her, instead of just assuming.

"A - a bath," she says in something that is nearly a whisper; cracked and unsure. "You said you...have a bath?"

"Yes. Yeah, I do. You...want one, then?" Malfoy asks stupid and just as uncertain as her, all wide, bleak grey eyes and face that is half masked by dried blood. She nods, her lips wobbling on an attempt to smile that fails miserably.

"Yes. Please."

"I should - a - a contraceptive charm, first," he gets out as though the words themselves are difficult to speak, and Hermione bites her tongue _hard._ She nods stiffly and lets him cast the charm, magic soaking into her skin as he flicks his wand and touches the tip to her abdomen. And then he moves - edging past her very cautiously as if to show he is not a threat - without a word, limping across the room. Hermione turns to watch him, tugging his shirt closed around her again and wincing at the pain as her bruised breasts jostle. He disappears through a door at the end of the room, and a moment later she hears the sound of water running. She hugs herself tightly and takes a faltering step forward, looking around Malfoy's room, trying to ignore the feel of the sticky residue between her thighs. Trying not to remember every detail of what the cum on her thighs is the result of, and partially succeeding. She focuses on her surroundings.

The room is large, but not exactly spacious considering what has been crowded into the suite. Curtained windows are set all down the wall to her right, the large four-poster bed against the left wall facing the windows. The floor is covered in large, antique carpets over the wood, the walls in silver and dark green striped wallpaper. There is a small breakfast table and two chairs down one end of the windows, and two small armchairs arranged to look out the windows over formal gardens, an end table between them. A desk stands against the wall directly at the right of the door into the room, and a large bookcase lies at the left of the door, with an armchair in the corner between the bookcase and the head of the bed. Directly opposite the door into the bedroom is the door into the bathroom, framed on either side by a chest of drawers. All the furniture is gleamingly polished dark wood, and the room itself has a sort of faded grandeur, like the rest of the house seems to.

If not for the lack of kitchenette it would be nearly like a Muggle studio apartment, Hermione thinks dully as she hobbles across it toward the bathroom.

Malfoy is bent over the basin as the bath runs beside him, scrubbing at his face and hands with a hand towel, distress crossing and twisting his features as the towel comes away dark brownish-red. He drops the hand towel and splashes water over his face, scraping at the dried blood of strangers' coating the left side of his face, using his nails to do it. Hermione stands in the doorway quietly and unnoticed as he does it, holding his shirt closed around her and leaning frail against the doorframe. He could use a _scourgify_ to clean his face, she thinks, but instead he is scouring his skin until it is rubbed raw, bringing painful colour to his ashen complexion, a frantic urgency in his movements.

His face is mostly clean before the bath finishes filling, and he wrenches of the bath taps, and then the basin taps, swiping his face roughly one last time with a clean towel that he tosses to the floor. He sags forward and hangs his head, hands gripping the edge of the basin and breath coming in ragged gasps, naked shoulders heaving. He straightens to stare at himself in the mirror – miserable and hollow – the muscles in his back sliding beneath the skin as he moves, all shifting shadows and light-struck skin by the oil lamps burning smokeless at the walls. He stares at himself, and then his eyes catch on Hermione's figure reflected in the mirror, and he flinches with fright.

"_Shit._" He takes a shaky breath and turns to face her – but his eyes fix on the floor by her feet rather than her eyes. His hands flex and clench at his sides. "I didn't hear you come in," he stumbles out weakly.

"I-is the bath ready?" she asks, staring at the deep porcelain tub, filled near to the brim with clean water that the steam is coiling and wisping off like fog, or blurring ribbons of smoke. Her eyes are _greedy_ on it, and it is all she can think of; to get this _filth_ off her and try to feel clean again. Malfoy nods, awkward, and as if she is just a houseguest, shows her where all the necessities are, before awkwardly edging past her out the door. Hermione shuts it quietly behind him, leaning her forehead against the wood of the door for a moment and letting out a shudder of relief as the key turns in the lock with the sound of dull metal, the tumblers falling.

The water is scalding hot and that is what Hermione wants; even though it hurts in its own way, it feels cleansing. It reaches to her shoulders when she sits, cradling her as she sinks beneath it, drifting under with her hair trailing round her like seaweed. It is serene and peaceful under the heavy, comforting water, and she feels _safe_, warmth and calm suffusing her. It eases the pain, just a little. It is a reprieve, a soothing balm, a moment in a place of sanctuary, with her eyes shut and bubbles of air tickling out her nostrils, every inch of her surrounded by gentle, clean heat.

When she resurfaces for air, Hermione can hear a rough, faint sounds carrying in through the crack beneath the door on a cool draught from the bedroom. It takes a moment with her forehead furrowed to recognise the barely audible noise, and when she does her hands curl into fists and she feels cold for a moment despite the heat she soaks in. It is the sound of Malfoy crying, muffled and rough; hitching, dry, sobs. She listens for a moment, sitting motionless in the water, the tips of her bedraggled wet hair dragging in the water, an insistent stinging pain between her legs where the man who cries in the room outside _hurt_ her, against both of their wills. She shuts her eyes.

She doesn't know what to feel.

Hermione runs the bath once again before she is done, because once she has cleaned herself – gingerly and with tears streaking her cheeks – and catalogued her many hurts, the water is tinted dirty reddish-grey. She rinses off in the shallower bath, relishing the fresh, hot water again, and wraps herself in a massive towel that hides the bruises quilted in patchwork over her torso and thighs, but the ones on her arms, face, tops of her breasts, and the rest of her legs are still painfully visible. She looks haggard, face swollen to the point where she is barely recognisable. She stares and stares, hair stringing around her face in dark tangles, and she can't find a connection to herself; she looks like a stranger in the mirror. A brutalised, hollowed out stranger. There is a bruise potion on the bathroom counter that she swallows, the taste bitter on her tongue.

There are no clothes to be found when Hermione automatically turns to put them on, and a little sob chokes out of her throat. Malfoy is sitting on the edge of his bed when she emerges, still in just his trousers – he needs to wash too, she supposes dully – his head sunk in his hands, fingers dragging at fistfuls of his own hair. He looks up when she clears her throat, and his hair is sticking up every which way, and there are tear tracks down his cheeks that he doesn't even try to hide. Her heart suddenly aches. He looks so young and so hurt, the stony mask he puts on in front of the other Death Eaters nowhere to be seen and self-loathing digging under his skin.

"Clothes," Malfoy says in a rasping, tear-stuffy voice before she can, as his eyes sweep over her and he realises. He gets up fast and starts digging through drawers, sniffing and wiping at his cheeks with the back of his wrist. He is raw and unhidden, completely without pretence, and it feels wrong to see him like this, but oddly comforting too. "Shit, I'm sorry."

She stares glazed and unfocused in his direction, numbness setting again as the heat of the bath evaporates off her. Her tone is dull and vague. "It's okay, Malfoy."

His fist slams against the front of the dresser with a _bang_ that makes her gasp and flinch back. "_No_, no it's fucking _not_ okay," he snarls and then catches himself when he sees her cringing out of the corner of his eye. His anger melts away. "It's not okay, Granger. Don't say it is. Please. That – that wasn't fucking _okay._"

He gives her a bundle of soft cotton that is a tee-shirt, and a pair of satin boxer shorts. "It's all I have that will fit you without needing to alter it." A pause, his eyes drawn to the bruised, rounded tops of her breasts above her towel. "Do you need me to heal anything? I – I'm not brilliant at healing magic, but I can try."

She nods; tossing the clothes he has given her on the bed beside them, and lets the towel drop. He wrenches in a breath and averts his eyes. "You've seen it before, Malfoy," she tells him, angry through split lips, and he hisses and shakes his head, still refusing to look. "You f-f-uck…ra-ra…_hurt _me, Malfoy. Now you're afraid to look at what you did? Everyone already saw me. _Everyone_, you included. There's no point in me trying to pretend any kind of _modesty_, or _privacy_, because I – I –"

"Don't," he tells her fiercely as he looks at her finally, but just her face, his gaze boring pale and sharp into hers. "Don't, Granger… I – don't do this…this…whatever the fuck it is. Please. It's not going to help anything. It's not…" He grabs the tee-shirt up off the bed, and very gently but firmly tugs it on over Hermione's head, nudging her shoulder with one hand and raising an eyebrow, encouraging her to put it the rest of the way on. She just stands there blinking, feeling so _much _that it overwhelms her; in shock and concussed and hurting, half catatonic. Malfoy helps her, like he is dressing a child, his jaw ratcheted tight and his eyes never lingering on anything but her face. And she lets him, his hands so gentle and his eyes so terribly sad, and she feels the tears rise and rise inside her chest.

She starts to cry halfway through his fumbling attempts at healing her hurts, as they sit on the edge of the bed and he traces his wand tip over the bite mark on her breast where _he _broke the skin trying to prove to the Death Eaters that he is still loyal. That he wants Hermione for reasons that they all approve of. He lets the tee-shirt fall back down to cover her, and turns away sharply as the tears leak from her in a rush. Her breath hitches in and out and her cheeks sheet with wetness, as she feels the utter, desperate misery of the moment. He plants his feet on the floor and leans forward, head burying in his hands, the lines of his body taut with a furious, shaking tension.

"I'm sorry." Malfoy's voice is muffled and wretched. Hermione stares down at her hands, knotting together in her lap, and swallows hard through her tears, which keep falling like rain. It is so _stupid _that the difference between his gentleness now and his cruelty then is the thing that makes her cry. It makes her _angry_, it makes her feel _weak._

"I – _good_. You – you _should _be. But…" And it is hard to say but she _wants _to say it; it feels right. "But it isn't your fault."

"I'm still the one that did it," he says choked, and he _is_, and that _does_ matter in its own way, but the r– what happened, wasn't his _fault._ Hermione tells him so again, in a small, cracked voice, and isn't sure that distinction means as much to him as it does to her.

It takes some time before she stops crying, and when she does Malfoy finishes healing her as best he can, his mouth a flat line and his eyes caught full with guilt. When he has finished he asks her if she wants anything else, and when she shakes her head mutely he tells her she can have the bed, if she wants to sleep. He will sleep in the armchair, or on the floor. She nods, pathetically grateful for somewhere comfortable and _safe_ to sleep, and curls up under the covers of his huge bed, watching with slitted eyes as Malfoy disappears into the bathroom. The door swings shut, leaving the bedroom dimmed, the oil lamps burning low – a beam of brighter light sliding out from beneath the bathroom door.

There is silence for a long moment, and then Hermione stifles a squeak and jolts in fright as the sound of glass smashing echoes from the bathroom, followed by Malfoy swearing loudly. Another thud, the tinkling of shards of what she _knows _must be the mirror above the basin. More swearing, vicious and furious and impotent, and several more thuds. She makes herself smaller in the bed even though he knows that she is in no danger from him; instinctively cringing, making a ball, her eyes wide on his shadow blotting out part of the light streaming under the door, moving back and forth, pausing occasionally. He says something again, a slew of muffled words; she doesn't understand them, but she knows the tone, broken and _angry_.

Something thuds heavy back against the door, and then slides down – the light is blocked as it seems Malfoy sits slumped down against the door. She can picture him, whether she wants to or not. She hugs herself, smelling him on the soft tee-shirt, and it is not unpleasant as she had thought it might be, but makes her think of safety and an aching sadness at once. It is a long time before his shadow moves again, flickering out of sight before the long, stretched silence is broken by the rush of water into the porcelain bathtub.

Hermione lies there under the heavy blankets and listens to the sound of running water, her heart a crumpled little ball in her chest, her body aching like a pulse, throbbing and rushing.

* * *

><p>"You are the one in control in here," Malfoy says calmly and slowly as he lays his wand down on the table, and takes a step back away from it. The morning sun is shining brightly through the net curtains, the drapes pulled wide open, and Hermione tries to enjoy the feel of it on her skin. The bruises and hurts from last night are already feeling better, but she is achy all over and the sun is nice. Soothing. She sits on the edge of the bed with her hands tangled in her lap and stares silently at Malfoy as he goes on. His eyes are ringed with dark circles, from bruising and sleeplessness both, and the shape of his jaw is distorted by swelling that hasn't dissipated entirely, his nose is bruised badly, the bruising sweeping down over each cheekbone.<p>

"While we are alone, you have the power in the situation - do you understand? Not me. _You_. I will do anything you want. I will leave if you want, if you tell me to stay in the armchair or in the fucking corner or on my bed" - he waves at the makeshift bed he'd transfigured for himself - "all day, then I will. I will let you _bind_ me if it helps you feel safer. You can do anything that won't compromise our safety." His eyes are clear and honest, as he backs away further from his wand, hands at his sides. There is a tender concern in his eyes that Hermione _hates_, because after last night - with her body sore and abraded from his _violations_ - all she wants to do is hate him. Call him monster. Then, hesitantly and low, he adds: "And...and if you want to hurt me, then I won't hold it against you. You can - can do that too, if you want. You have every right to."

"Okay." Hermione takes up the wand feeling oddly calm and disconnected as she stares at him. She's allowed to hate him. She doesn't have to be thankful he saved her life. He _raped_ her. She doesn't have to feeling fucking understanding toward him just because he regrets it, just because he didn't have a choice. He still fucking _did it._ "Would now be fine?" she asks, and her tone is acid and disbelieving. He can't mean for her to actually hurt him - it has to be a bluff, he must be merely pretending, to make her feel better, safer. But she's calling his bluff, because she doesn't care for lies, even well-intentioned ones. Only...instead of changing his mind and telling her no, Malfoy swallows hard but nods once, tight and scared. His voice is barely audible; a whisper of frightened sound:

"Y-yes."

Hermione stares at him in shock. _Yes?_ She knows he's a good liar, but she's certain he's not lying now; he would gain nothing from it, and he hasn't lied to her yet, not really. He swallows again, throat clicking dryly, and she believes him. And...is it wrong that she enjoys the sight of fear in his eyes as he looks at her? She shifts her grip on his wand, getting a sense for it. It's warm and feels _friendly - _pliable and cooperative, and she thinks that it shouldn't work too terribly in her hands. She tries a _lumos_, and it sputters, and then flares, before collapsing entirely, but she thinks it will be serviceable for her purposes.

"Get on your knees then," she tells him, and again Malfoy nods once, and obeys. He sinks to his knees several feet away from her, eyes pale and soft on hers, features smooth and unreadable. He violated her. Used her and hurt her and tore her apart and nothing can ever be the same again. "Crucio!" she snarls, meaning it as much as she can, and Malfoy jerks with a sound of pain and doubles forward, crumpling like a broken toy. "Crucio!" He twists on the floor, hunched in a ball, fingers scrabbling at the wood as an animal whining emits from his throat. He tips to one side and his back arches as she spits the curse again, feeling oddly numb. As though she is watching someone else do this to him. Hermione Granger doesn't use Unforgivables, only - only she _is_.

Malfoy's face is red and contorted with the pain surging through him, jaw clenched tight, so that the sounds of pain grate between his teeth, and his tendons and veins are standing out in ropes on his throat and at his temples. He whines again, helpless and hurting on the floor, and _oh_. _Oh._ What is she _doing? _It's wrong, and horrible, and she is so much better than this. Hermione drops the wand to the carpet and backs away, hugging herself tightly and retreating until her legs hit the bed. She sits down abruptly, staring at him with big, frightened eyes as he struggles up onto all fours, and then his feet. Malfoy sways slightly, and balances himself with a hand on the table, making no move to pick up his wand.

"Granger." His voice is a rasp. "Granger? Are you - you okay?" Hermione just _stares_ at him. How can he ask her that? Firstly, it's _he_ who was just hurt _by her_, and secondly _no_, of _course_ she's not fucking okay. She shakes her head, and he stumbles for a chair and all but falls into it, hands trembling from the _Cruciatus._ "I'm sorry," he tells her, heavy with emotion. "I'm so fucking sorry and it'll never be enough or mean anything or change anything, but I _am_. I wish…but - it was - it was the only way."

"I know that," she mumbles, pressing her thumbnail into the back of her other hand as hard as she can and watching it dent deep, pain radiating almost pleasantly. "But it doesn't change things. And hurting you won't make me feel _better_." And then she hobbles forward as fast as she can, snatching up his wand and retreating with it, to the overstuffed armchair that crouches in the dark corner by the bed. She curls up on it, knees to her chest and arms wrapped around her legs, face buried in the hollow between legs and body. His wand, she holds tight in her right hand. She waits, for him to say something else, but he doesn't. There's only silence beating against her ears, until her soft, muffled weeping chases it away.

* * *

><p><em>Leave a review to feed the muse :)<em>


	4. Part Four

**Edit:** As of the **28th of April 2015**, I have made major changes to this fic, thanks to constructive criticism by a reader. Scenes have been added, and the tone and content of many existing scenes have been altered or expanded upon. I hope that such alterations give a better picture of the dynamic between Draco and Hermione, which previously was not illustrated in a great deal of detail because I was trying to keep this fic short. However, the subject material does not lend itself to brevity, it seems - and in order to make a proper go of achieving what I set out to achieve, I have had to make some changes. I _recommend_ skimming back through the fic from the beginning before reading on, but doing so is not _necessary_. I hope you find the changes I've made to be positive ones!

Liss xx

* * *

><p><span><strong>Part Four<strong>

"You have to eat _something_," he says in half-angry frustration, standing there before her in dark grey oxford shirt, vest, and dress trousers, waiting with anxious eyes and tense shoulders. Hermione huddles smaller on the corner armchair she has been in since she woke screaming at four am, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She ducks her head to stare at the floor just to the right of Malfoy, and shakes it, hair falling forward like a veil. The soup and toast he brought up on a silver tray sits sadly untouched on the breakfast table across the room, along with a large pot of tea. She isn't hungry. She has spent the past three days not being hungry, nothing passing her lips except water and a tea the Malfoy brought up for her, and now, on the fourth day, he is…something more than just worried.

"Granger...you _have_ to." He grind the words out, and Hermione shuts her eyes and rests her forehead against her knees, breathing hot and slow into the safe dark space between her folded up legs and her body.

"I'm not hungry," she tells the warm darkness, hugging her bare legs tighter. If she stays very still and very small, it is…easier. Easier to pretend to be elsewhere, anywhere but _here_, trapped in Voldemort's seat of power. Malfoy tried to go out to the drop point again yesterday, and was sent back, he told her. Not allowed out; under watch, a consequence of his deceit. She wonders if he is telling the truth, sometimes, in her darker moments, when everything seems hopeless and desperate, as if the end has come for her and she just hasn't realised it yet. Just hasn't lain down and died.

"If you don't eat, you'll die," he snaps then, and Hermione peeks up at him, nervous and alert; he is flushed with his anger and haggard from exhaustion, his fists bunching at his sides. Her eyes linger on his fists with instinctive hints of fear stirring and curling sick in her belly; he hasn't laid a finger on her except to deal with her injuries since it happened, but a primal part of her must _remember_. She flinches when he moves too quickly around her, and when he displays anything but calm her heart becomes a stampede in her chest, and fear-sweat chills her skin. Malfoy follows the line of her vision, and he makes a sharp, apologetic sound and his hands fly open. Splaying large and long-fingered, skinny, the knuckles on his right hand bruised and patterned with little nicks and cuts from when he had broken the bathroom mirror and never healed himself.

"You'll die if you don't eat," he says again, in a voice that is too-calm and too-soft, and vibrates with tension under the surface, hands fidgeting awkwardly at his sides – he is too aware of them now, Hermione thinks absently. She sighs and rests her temple against one knee, trying to ignore Malfoy; she feels dizzy and _gone_, as though she is floating away from everything. Partly the hunger and partly just how she feels now. "And then – then – what _happened_…what I _did_ to you will have been for – been for fucking _nothing_. For _nothing._" He loses his calm then, voice breaking rough, and his fingers spidering wide at his sides as he tries to stop himself making fists. "_Granger, please._"

"I'm sure it was so terrible for you," she says quiet and bitter, staring absently off across the room, pain swelling and cracking against her ribs. Her breath snaps in, voice turns _vicious._ "So awful for you, how you had to hit me and hurt me and – and stick your dick in me and –"

"_Don't_." The word rips furious from Malfoy's throat as his shoes shift on the floor, and she presses her lips together and lifts her head to watch him as he takes two stumbling steps back. He is bloodless-pale and somehow fragile in his anger, shoulders hunched a little and his eyes wide and written with sick guilt. "It _was_," he hisses, fists clenching again, the words wobbling and shaking and spilling from his lips. "It fucking _was_ awful and don't you _dare _- don't you _dare_ act like it was fun for me. I – I – yeah it was so much fucking worse for you, Granger, I _realise _that, I'm not an arsehole, but I – I wasn't exactly having a fucking good – good time. I…I didn't want to _hurt you…_"

He turns away fast, his head bowing and his hands sliding quick through his hair, self-soothing and panicky, his breath coming in ragged and loud in the silence. And then he moves forward again and snatches up his wand from the arm of the chair, before walking away with stiff, sharp steps, without a word; across the bedroom and out the door. He shuts it with a carefulness that makes it clear he wanted to slam it, and she hears it lock behind him. She can still use the key that dangles from a small chain by the door to get out – she knows; she has tried before. Malfoy locking it merely keeps her safe from the other occupants of the mansion.

The air shudders out of her.

Cruel; what she said was just plain _cruel_, and Hermione wishes now, staring at the closed door from her huddle on the armchair, that she could take it back. But she can't. And she cannot deny that it felt so good to get it out. She has threads of anger mixed in with her fear and listlessness, which spark up now and then like a struck match, and when she doesn't exorcise it, it _burns_ her. She unfolds from the chair and gets up with a wince, dizzied and weak from fasting, her muscles feeling sore. Thanks to the bruise potions and Malfoy's rudimentary healing skills her injuries are nearly fully gone, but sitting cramped in one place for so long leaves her body stiff.

But it feels safest there – the darkest corner of the room when the reading lamp is turned off, the armchair like a fortress in her mind. An illusion of protection; a nest to retreat to. Where she sits, and sits, and sits, and lets the day drift past her without truly touching her, only moving to go pee and gulp down water from the bathroom hand basin. She does that now, wondering where Malfoy has gone, and when he will be back. Hoping he will be all right and unharmed, both because she hurt him, and because he is all that is keeping her safe right now.

She washes her hands with soap that smells like woody spices and vanilla, and finger combs her straggling hair. Malfoy hasn't mended the mirror above the basin, and Hermione is glad of that. She doesn't want to see herself; because she looks awful, because it hurts, because she doesn't recognise the look in her own eyes. She hates seeing a stranger staring back at her. Filling her cupped hands with water, Hermione drinks until the hunger pangs in her stomach have quieted a little. She doesn't know why she doesn't want to eat. She just…doesn't want to, so she doesn't. It is one of the few things she _can_ control, so maybe that is why.

The room is still empty and silent when Hermione emerges from the bathroom, and she sighs softly, shoulders sagging with both relief and disappointment mixed. She does what she has done the past few days while Malfoy is gone serving his Dark Lord; sits and tries to read, to sleep, to think of a way out, to lose herself in happy memories – to do anything but sit and dwell on the trauma and fear that make a toxic stew in her stomach. The worst thing is not what _has_ happened, she thinks, as she sits in the armchair with the book she has been trying and failing to read for the past half-hour.

It is not the women dying in the dungeons, or the rape and the beatings, although both those things haunt her nightmares. But those aren't what crawl under her skin and make her itch and panic and curl up on the armchair during the day, feeling like being very, very still is the only way she can hold herself together. Those things are _over_ now; there is nothing Hermione can do to save the women, and Malfoy will not hurt her again – it was Voldemort's fault, Malfoy didn't want to hurt her, it was their only option, and it saved her life, she tells herself – and knowing that helps her cope with it, most of the time. She feels horrified and violated, but knowing that she _and_ Malfoy were both as unwilling makes it…easier to bear.

What Hermione is finding it hardest to cope with, is the fear that _she will never get out of here alive_.

That Malfoy won't be able to get her out, that he'll be found out as a traitor, that he won't be able to protect her anymore, that the Order won't come to rescue her, that Voldemort will take her away from Malfoy and do Merlin knows what with her, that she will be trapped in Malfoy's room forever. Her fears of the future prey on Hermione's mind without end; a constant litany of the same terrible thoughts over and over, mixed in with memories and nightmares. So she tries to distract herself, and think of – _do_ – other things. She always fails, as she does now, sitting on the armchair with the book unread, picturing her death over and over in a multitude of different ways, wondering in the back of her mind if Malfoy will come back or if he has been found out, even now.

* * *

><p>When Malfoy returns, hours later, he carries a tray that is laden with food, and moves with an odd stiffness to the table, laying his wand down in an obvious manner for her to collect if she wishes, before going about his business. He doesn't look at Hermione, but she glues her eyes on him, filled with relief that he is back, and trying to work up the momentum to <em>say<em> something. He vanishes the old tray – the food still untouched – and sets down the new one, unloading the plates. Roast meats, crispy roast potatoes, an array of other vegetables, and a decanter of pumpkin juice. Hermione's stomach growls shockingly loud and he looks up and across the room at her, eyes falling on her in her dark corner.

"Oh my god!" Hermione's eyes spring wide and she covers her mouth to stifle her gasp as she stares at him full of shocked concern; Malfoy sports brand new colourful bruises. One sweeps purple-red from atop the swollen bridge of his nose down underneath each eye, there are more spreading on his right cheekbone and left jaw, there is a fresh split in his left eyebrow that is red raw but not bleeding, and his mouth is puffy, lips swollen, bruises around the left of it. He looks a mess. The last of the bruises from - from when they had been found out had just been beginning to fade yellow-green, and now he was hurt all over again.

"What…what happened?" She knows that whatever has happened can't be too bad, considering he seems more concerned with dinner than anything else. But she worries anyway, nerves jangling. It could be a sign of things to come.

"Come and eat, Granger," he says, voice tired and a little thick, dabbing gingerly at his swollen mouth with the side of his thumb, and checking it for blood. Hermione frowns, annoyed at having her question ignored, her worry picking up. She has no intention of eating, but she gets up anyway. Malfoy's tee-shirt falls to just below her bum as she stands, his boxer shorts reaching mid-thigh, the satin slipping and sliding together as she approaches him. It feels strange to be walking _toward_ Malfoy instead of avoiding him as she has the past couple of days, and from the little half-step he slides back with a wince, it doesn't feel natural to him either.

She stops a few paces away from him, hugging her arms loosely around her waist in a defensive gesture she isn't really even aware of. She'd had vague plans of demanding to know what had happened, but now she just feels exposed and vulnerable, and wishes she had stayed in her corner. Only…his _face. _Malfoy raises his unhurt eyebrow at her, maybe trying for casual and unconcerned, but this up close he just looks wrecked. She winces in sympathy for him, eyes running over each purple-red, darkening bruise, the swollen knots and puffy places on his face that make him look not quite right.

Malfoy's eyes are grey like river stones; wet-dark and worn smooth, unreadable. They seem out of place in the bruises and swellings, which change the angles and lines of his face and make her want to play spot the difference with the shape of his features.

"Are you all right, Granger?" he asks, half-worried, half-painfully amused, and then hisses in self-censure as he realises the obvious a second too late. "Sorry, I just mean…you look…you're staring," he finishes weakly, rubbing at his mouth again as though it bothers him – and it no doubt does, Hermione thinks, as swollen and tenderised as it is.

"I – I'm fine," she says hesitantly, forcing herself to drop her arms to her sides, where they hang awkwardly – she's too aware of them now. It feels strange to talk as well; her voice is a little scratchy and sounds loud and echoing in her ears. She had said as little as possible the past few days, and besides, she feels so light-headed _everything_ seems a little wrong and off-balance. "Are _you _all right, Malfoy?"

"It doesn't matter." He drops his hand from his mouth and backs away with marionette-awkward steps, sitting down at the table and gesturing for her to take the other chair. She edges closer. The food – piled on two large platters in the middle of the table – smells delicious, and Malfoy takes generous helpings of everything for his own plate. It tempts her gnawing belly, but she's focused on why the man keeping her alive is noticeably and rather horribly battered.

"Aren't you…going to heal it?" Malfoy shakes his head, fringe falling forward from its rough slick back, a few fine, nearly-white strands getting caught by the raw, weeping split at his brow.

"No. It's a – well, not a punishment, _exactly_. But if I heal it I may just get replacements. I'd rather not risk that."

"Does it concern…me, at all?" Hermione remains standing for now, tense and nervy, feeling herself like an animal that could startle at any second. The dark, faux-safety of the corner is stupidly appealing, although she can't help noticing the food, stomach cramping and mouth flooding with saliva

"No," he says smoothly – too smoothly, and she narrows her eyes at him, her pulse thwip-thwip-thwipping quicker and her chest feeling tighter. He's lying and Hermione _knows_ it. Fear tumbles and catches all the way down the bones of her spine, icy and jolting.

"Yes it _does_." She sounds reedy and thin in her fear, as though she can't seem to draw a proper breath. That would be because she _can't_, and she wonders vaguely if she's having a panic attack. Malfoy's mouth tightens and he looks down at his plate, picking up his knife and fork and sawing too-vigorously at a slice of beef. His knife squeals on the china, cool grey eyes flicking up to meet hers for a second, and his tone is firm and final as he looks back at his dinner plate.

"I sorted it, Granger. It's fine. There's no need… Just drop it."

"Tell me, or I won't eat," she says then, stepping up to the table and resting her hand lightly on the back of the chair, not sitting down yet. It's a rather desperate bargaining attempt and she hates using it, but from the suddenly furious and _trapped_ look in Malfoy's pale eyes, she thinks it will work. But then his grip on his cutlery shifts, holding it hard and angry in his fisted hands.

"I swear to Merlin, Granger, that I will force-feed you if I have to," he growls warningly, and Hermione blanches, just the thought of being trapped and helpless while Malfoy holds her down and… Echoes of sharp, bloody, memory rise in her mind and her fingers cramp white-knuckled tight on the chair, her whole body goes tense, and she stares at him wide-eyed and frantic, fingers scrabbling for his wand and closing over it tight.

"_Don't._ You can't d-do that." She feels tears rise burning behind her eyes as panic slams through her. She begs him, trying not to remember, unthinking and frantic: "_Please._" Malfoy is horror-struck. He swears harsh beneath his breath and makes a frustrated sound that she doesn't think is directed at her.

"_Fuck_. I didn't mean that. I didn't mean it. All right? I want you to fucking well _eat something_, but I won't make…you're not a prisoner." He pushes his fringe off his forehead with one hand, fingers shoving through his white-blonde hair, and his eyes lock to hers. He stares up at her steadily, and earnest. "You don't have to be afraid I'm going to hurt you…a-again." It sounds like the last word is _dragged_ out of him, and his eyes slide from hers to the table, shame weighing his shoulders and making his mouth turn down a little.

She swallows hard. "If you won't tell me about something that relates to me, just because you don't feel like it, then I may as well be your prisoner."

A pause, before a resumption of anger in Malfoy's face and voice. "Fine then," he says, with dull resentment at having his hand forced. When he looks up at Hermione her stomach flips with fear-sympathy-sadness at the bleakness in Malfoy's eyes as he gives in to her. "_Fine_. If you must know, Goyle and Crabbe Sr. caught me trying to slip out to the drop point again. They stopped me, and in the course of escorting me back inside, said they wanted to take a turn at you," he says bluntly, his tone still flat and dull. "I told them that they could go fuck each other because they wouldn't be laying a finger on you, and unsurprisingly, they didn't take to that well."

A beat as Hermione processes that, her stomach tying in sick knots; because she is in very real danger, because Malfoy was beaten for protecting her, because after what she said to him this morning he had still risked everything try to get her out again. She bites her tongue, trying to be calm and stay where she is, clutching the chair like a lifeline. The possibility that the other Death Eaters would be so eager to hurt her hadn't occurred to her before now. She had thought that being thought of as Malfoy's would make her untouchable. Apparently not.

"…Oh. Oh, I…"

"They disarmed me _before_ they told me what they wanted to do with you – used an _expelliarmus_ when I wasn't expecting it, bloody backstabbing fucks," he tells her, as if disgusted with himself for being caught off-guard. "And then when I told them I wouldn't let them…have you, they took their displeasure out on me, as I said. I'm just lucky that the two _idiots_ didn't use magic, and didn't kill me accidentally either." He sighs, frustrated and short, shoving his food aimlessly about his plate as he goes on. Hermione finds herself sitting down at the table, hands knotted up in her lap, twining over each other nervously as she listens.

"Wandless, there's only so much I can do against those two fuckers. They're built like their sons, as you saw." He grimaces. "When I tried to warn them off by telling them the Dark Lord wouldn't like two worthless gits putting one of his most promising servants out of action, they said the Dark Lord had removed his protection, and continued merrily kicking the shit out of me." There's a dry flippancy to him as he lays down his cutlery, unconsciously holding his side with one hand as he shifts in his seat and runs two fingers gently over the bruise on his cheekbone.

Hermione cringes with empathy, as she remembers starkly the assault she'd suffered in the cells – and tries very hard not to remember the brutality that Malfoy had inflicted on her himself, before he'd raped her. That wasn't quite the same, Hermione thinks reluctantly. He hadn't had a choice, she reminds herself. He'd tried to protect her at every point up until then, she reminds herself. Except, a small part of her can't help but feel there is some karmic justice in the fact that just four days later _he_ has been beaten himself, again. Mostly, though, she just feels sorry for Malfoy. But her first focus is the rather worrying thing that Malfoy said at the end there. "What...what does that mean? About Voldemort…removing his protection?"

"It means there is a great deal of in-fighting that I _was_ exempt from, from which I am no longer. I'll have to watch my back far more carefully." Malfoy seems mostly unconcerned – unlike her. Being that she can't do anything about it and all it does is make her feel panicky and furious at her helplessness, Hermione almost wishes that he hadn't told her. Almost. But she is glad she knows, in the end. She stares at his grey eyes, swept beneath by purpling bruises, and wonders who on earth he is, the man who sits before her. He isn't the same arrogant, self-absorbed, cruel boy she knew at Hogwarts; he is someone else entirely now. Someone who risks death to do the right thing, it seems. Is that all because of Snape's memories? Merlin, what did he see? What did he see that could change him so astonishingly?

"I'm sorry," she says very quietly. "About you – you getting hurt, and…about what I said earlier."

Malfoy shrugs, but his bruised features seem to soften a little, and the less injured side of his mouth twitches up into something that almost seems to be a smile. "Don't be sorry, Granger. Just…eat."

* * *

><p>She wakes in the moonlit dark to panic and a dark shape looming over the bed, cautiously shaking her shoulder as a familiar, low voice calls her name rough with sleep. "– <em>down<em>, Granger. It's just a dream. _Fuck, Granger_…" Blurred with nightmares and caught in a maelstrom of sobs, Hermione flails to push back the person touching her at first, gasping and choking, whooping for air.

"_No!_" She scrambles back with frantic pushes of her feet against the bed, propelling herself across it away from the figure beside the bed, still half-asleep and snared in her nightmares. Her heart pounds like a hammer in her chest, and she's clammy and cold with sweat as she tries to drag herself up out of the confusing thick clog of sleep. "No," she says again, stronger now but still frantic and wrenched from her, pressing her back hard into the wall as if she can sink through it. Her hands are up, as if to ward off an attacker.

_Voldemort's inhuman, gleeful smile. The men burning the bodies of prisoners. Malfoy's hand rubbing against her knickers. Being held down as the Snatchers drag at her jeans and thrust their tongues in her mouth_. _In the hall when Malfoy - _Hermione sobs and squeezes her eyes tight shut; trying to find reality in the silvered dark. "_No_."

"Granger – Granger, it's okay." His voice, gentle but urgent, and her eyes snap up to him, recognising him at last; Malfoy. Pale eyes and hair that snare the moonlight, bruises shockingly dark on his face. His tongue flicks out to wet his battered lips. "It's okay."

The last of her dream snags and claws at Hermione as she sucks in a steadying breath and pulls her knees up, buries her face in her hands. _Malfoy's body heavy on her bloodied, battered one, a harsh pain radiating through her insides as he thrusts rough into her, again and again, all hard, sharp desperation._ God. She hugs around her middle tightly and folds forward over the bars of her arms, staring at her bare feet atop the twisted blankets. She gulps as her stomach twists, and sour bile rises acrid in the back of her throat. Malfoy's presence is barely reassuring, considering the content of Hermione's nightmares.

"I feel sick," she chokes out, gulping hard and breathing harder, trying to centre herself in the now and banish the nightmare-memories. "I feel…"

Malfoy backs away, turning and making for the table, and she stares blindly after him. All she can see are the soft sheaves of his white-blonde hair shining in the moonlight, and flashes of pale shoulders, glimpses of the lean lines of his back. He feels around on the table - that's right, she'd left his wand there - and whispers a charm. The lamps at the walls flare into life, before settling low and bathing the room in a dull orange-gold glow, and she can see him properly then. It's suddenly easier to breathe. He is less threatening in the soft light; so unlike her fear-filled memories of him.

Malfoy is shirtless, in low slung pyjama trousers knotted with a drawstring, and his torso is as bruised as hers was several days ago - more bruised if she counts the bruising _he'd_ received several days ago. He is covered in dark flowers of purples, blues, red-blacks, and old yellow-greens, and Hermione is drawn out of the last vestiges of dazed sleep by a pained sympathy. Her breath wrenches in, her gaze sweeping over the lean angles of him. Silver ridges of scar tissue catch both the lamplight and her eyes; old scars striped diagonal across his chest and abdomen, half-buried by all the vivid bruising, along with a sprinkle of other odd, uneven scars. She stares; mapping the old wounds and fresh injuries that crisscross Malfoy's pale skin is a distraction from the memory-thoughts looping harsh and frantic through her head. There are a surprising number of them for someone his age, even given the war.

Malfoy sees her staring as he walks over and drops his wand into her lap, muscles shifting and sliding under his skin as he backs away a step or two and stretches unselfconsciously. He presses a hand to a deep bruise at the right of his abdomen as he rolls his shoulders back, and eyes her cautiously. "Granger?" She blinks and looks away, her arms loosening their death grip on her middle, an exhale sinking out of her. She feels small and tense.

"I'm – I'm all right now, I think." She knows she doesn't sound it. The nightmare is fading to insubstantial tatters, as she watches Malfoy cross to a dresser and dig a white tee shirt out of a drawer, but she is still all adrenaline-charged nerves. "You were talking in your sleep," Malfoy says in a tight, strained voice as he yanks the tee shirt on over his head. Hermione remembers; snippets and drifts. His eyes flick over to her, wary, guilt written in the way he holds his mouth and ducks his face a little. _Please, Malfoy, don't. Please._ Yes, she remembers. He swallows hard, staring at the floor, his hair an unruly mess and his hands fidgeting at his sides.

"Do you want me to go?"

"What?" His question comes from nowhere, and Hermione doesn't understand why he asks it. She slides back down the bed, off her frightened huddle on the pillow against the wall. The sheets are cool and crisp on her bare legs. "Why?" She doesn't like it that the thought of Malfoy leaving her alone scares her; she shouldn't want to cling to him for comfort. But the fact is, she is no longer protected by merely belonging to Malfoy, and while she is quite safe locked and warded in here without him, she is even safer _with_ him. And she doesn't know why he would think he should leave.

"Because…I don't want to remind you of…if you've just dreamt about it…I'd understand if you don't want to be near me. If you don't feel safe with me…" Malfoy is ineloquent, awkward and stilted, a hot flush colouring the unbruised parts of his cheeks. _Oh_, she thinks; that would make sense, but now that she is fully awake again and can distinguish between dream and reality –

"No. You can stay." Her hands twist up in the bedding, yanking it up over her lap, a heavy weight on her legs as she stares at Malfoy's mouth. The damage to it draws her attention, lips swollen and bruised around the corner, and it is easier to look at than his eyes right now, and not just because he has them cast down toward the floor. "I – I would rather you stayed."

"You're sure?" He licks his lower lip – begins to worry it in a moment of forgetfulness, before wincing and releasing it fast.

"It was just a dream, Malfoy."bHis reddened mouth tightens a little, and she flicks her eyes up to meet his. He is looking at her as though she is a particularly stupid child, telling lies everyone sees through. Maybe she is.

"Granger." Tiredly, his eyes weary and the side of his thumb dabbing tentatively at his mouth, as though he thinks it is bleeding. He has been doing that all evening. "Don't…"

"Don't _what_, Malfoy?" Hermione is a little sharp; mouth pursing up as she glares at him. The food she ate earlier has given her new energy – she feels stronger and more grounded with something in her stomach. Malfoy's eyebrow arches in surprise for a second, but the discomfort on his face remains.

"Don't try to – it wasn't just a fucking dream." His hands clench up at his sides for a moment, and Hermione bites down on the inside of her cheek, pulling her legs up to her chest and hugging them. It feels safe. His wand rolls to the middle of the bed and she ignores it. It barely works for her anyway.

"No." Her voice is small and flat. "It wasn't."

"You were saying my name. You were scared. _Crying_."

"I'm not scared now," Hermione offers, voice still small, not sure why she's telling him this except that it's true, and also because she thinks that he hates himself for what he did. And as awful as it was, she doesn't think he should hate himself. It wasn't like he wanted to. It wasn't like he had a better choice.

"That's – that's not the point, Granger."

"Isn't it?" She eyes him, feeling oddly calm, her cheek resting against her knee and her eyes running over his bruised and battered features. "I think maybe it is."

"This morning you seemed…angry at me." He is uncertain and confused, shifting on his feet nervously. And yes, Hermione had been angry. She still is. But not at him, exactly. And intellectually she _knows_ that she can trust him, even if her body still flinches when he comes near. A yawn cracks her jaw, and she huffs a sigh, feeling oddly normal in her weariness.

"Just…stay. Please, Malfoy? I feel safer knowing I'm not alone, in this place," she admits, and watches his lips stutter apart as he hisses softly in surrender. "I know you won't hurt me, Malfoy. Not unless they - they force you to. And they're not here. I trust you, Malfoy." She can see some of the tension and self-loathing drain out of him as his shoulders relax beneath the white tee shirt, and he nods a silent assent.

He leans over her, and scoops up his wand, putting it gently on the bedside table and settling not back in his makeshift bed, but instead at a chair at the table, with a book - leaving _her_ armchair free for her to retreat to if she wants. And every night so far that is what she's done when she's woken. Except tonight, Malfoy leaves a lamp burning to read by, slouched in a chair with his hair licked pale gold by the light, and Hermione stays in the bed a little longer. Curled up on her side with her slitted eyes fixed on Malfoy, who she thinks must feel her gaze but ignores it. He sits and reads, the crisp _shruk _of pages turning at intervals almost lulling. Her eyes droop, the lids growing ever heavier, but she stares at Malfoy for as long as she can.

She feels almost safe.

* * *

><p>"Right," he says to her the next day, once he's returned from his day's duties and washed, and changed into pyjama trousers and a tee-shirt. Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione can see that his bony feet are bare, and his hair is golden damp and keeps falling over his eyes. Malfoy looks like any 20-year-old man, if one who likes picking fights, the last of his bruising still just barely visible. He sits down on the edge of the bed, and she can feel his gaze boring into her as she huddles on the armchair and pretends to ignore him. "Right. You need to eat, Granger," he tells her calmly. "It's not optional, anymore."<p>

"It's _what?_" She snaps her book shut, and looks up at him then. "_Not optional?_ What's that supposed to mean, Malfoy?" It makes her feel…nervous. Unsettled. _Threatened_. She doesn't like it when he says things like that. The wand is on the bedside table between her armchair and the bed, and she snatches it up, bringing it close to herself and half-glaring at him. He sighs.

"Have you seen yourself lately, Granger?" There is a calm on Malfoy's face that Hermione can't hope to rival, and it irritates her.

"You haven't fixed the mirror," Hermione whispers, staring down into her lap as she turns the wand over and over in her hands. It's a stupid excuse and she knows it; she _is_ far too thin, it's obvious even to her. The clothes Malfoy has given her hang off her now, and her bones poke out sharp against her ashen, papery skin. But she's just…not hungry. The sympathy on his face hurts. It's too tender, too kind, too _sad_. Draco Malfoy isn't supposed to care about her wellbeing. It only makes her _angry_ right now.

"You fucking well _know_ you're too thin. And you know that you haven't eaten properly - if at all - in _days _now. Nearly a bloody _week_ now, you've been picking at meals, or having nothing at all. You can't go on like this. You'll _die_."

There's nothing she has to say to that.

"What - what do you like? To eat, I mean. …Granger?" She's silent, and Malfoy holds out his hand for his wand. "I'll be back shortly," he says, and she hands it over to him reluctantly, always just the tiniest bit frightened he'll turn it on her, even though she knows intellectually how _stupid_ she knows that is. "Okay? Half an hour, and I'll have dinner. And I want you to actually _try_ to eat, okay." Hermione nods silently, not really meaning it, and huddles up in the chair again, turning her face away from him and the worry that radiates off him like an aura. Food makes her feel sick, and the dizzy, light, hollowness that she feels from starving herself and going without is…nice, somehow. Satisfying.

* * *

><p>It's a while longer than half an hour before Malfoy appears again, carrying a heavily laden tray in his arms, and kicking the door shut behind him. Hermione catches the scent of something, and her mouth <em>waters<em> despite herself. She sniffs the air. "Is that…?" she begins, and then snaps her mouth shut. Malfoy actually _grins_. He lays the tray down on the table, and takes off the cover with a silly flourish that she would have teased him for, in another life. Unable to resist the scents, and dreadfully curious as to _what_ exactly Malfoy has gotten, Hermione stands and edges closer to the table. Oh, Merlin.

There are fish and chips still cradled on some greasy paper, and a king-sized block of Muggle chocolate, and a bag of mixed sweets, and packets of Muggle biscuits, and - oh my god, he got her McDonalds. Disgusting, unhealthy, delicious McDonalds - not to mention about half a dozen more unhealthy junk foods, all of which make Hermione's mouth water uncontrollably. She hasn't had Muggle food in far too long - it's just never something that she thinks about at times when doing so is possible. So this…this is like a feast. Like a gift. She picks up the block of chocolate and rubs her thumb gently over the wrapper, listening to the soft crinkle and looking up at him in disbelief. "How - How did you _get_ this?" He smiled, just the tiniest bit, as she dropped the chocolate and opened the McDonalds' bag, shoving a salty chip in her mouth.

"I told the house elf who usually prepares our food that I wanted it. It's somewhat frowned upon, but not unheard of, for Death Eaters to want to sample Muggle food." He shuffles his feet awkwardly, standing by the table as Hermione sits down and shoveled food into her mouth without any attempt at manners, suddenly desperately, achingly, _irresistibly _ravenous. She wobbles a smile up at him through a mouthful of burger.

"Sit. Eat," she says once she's chewed and swallowed her mouthful, gesturing to the chair opposite. If she shuts her eyes, she could almost be out with her dad - so she does close her eyes, and pretend for a moment. Sitting at a booth on vinyl seats, coke cold on her tongue and chips fresh and hot and salty, chatting about school and Harry and Ron, while her father listens and asks questions now and then. Hermione opens her eyes, to see Malfoy there instead. Palest platinum fringe falling fine and silky half over his eyes as he examines a packet of M&Ms, his mouth thoughtful and relaxed, slouching in his chair in his pyjamas, legs stretched out under the table. She shifts her foot and her toes bump against his, and he jolts, nearly dropping the M&Ms and staring up at her with wide eyes. Her lips twitch faintly into what could nearly be a smile, as she moves her foot away.

"Nice?" he asks her after a moment, nervous as if her scoffing the food as fast as possible isn't a rather clear sign that she like it, and she _does_ smile then, small but real, and nods emphatically.

"Yes, _very_. …Thank you, Malfoy."

* * *

><p>A day ticks by.<p>

And another.

Another.

Another.

It becomes mind-numbing and soul-crushing, and yet somehow Hermione manages to adjust within the first week - to become resigned to it. It is amazing what people can become accustomed to, she thinks from the pretended safety of her armchair. Although, what exactly 'accustomed' means is debateable, Hermione supposes. She is coping though, in a fashion; captivity is becoming her new normal. And it is becoming that far quicker than she is comfortable with, if she is honest. It scares her, how easily she has surrendered to this; but then what other choice does she have except to get herself killed, and at this point that would help no one. Not that she expected Malfoy would even let her. So she just…survives, and the days tick by, excruciatingly slow.

Except for the odd day that Malfoy asks the house elf to bring Muggle food, all the days are the same as the one that came before. Just the same. The banality of it almost begins to eclipse the constant fear that hovers with sharp claws just behind Hermione's back. She starts eating better again, thanks mostly to Malfoy trying to feed her up with Muggle junk food, and she begins to gain back the weight she lost while in the dungeon, and fasting. She sits all day in her armchair and tries to read. Malfoy says that if he can regain Voldemort's faith in him, he'll be able to get to the drop point again and the Order will figure out a rescue plan. She accepts that, and stops dreaming up futile escape plans. She watches out the windows sometimes, and tries to see shapes in the clouds. When she can't focus on her book, or the clouds, or distract herself with a mindless hot bath, Hermione thinks of home.

Hermione thinks with an ache sharp in her chest of the small safehouse that she, Harry, Ron, and the rest of the Weasleys have been staying in for the past several months. Of dinners at the long table, and Harry kissing Ginny on the cheek. Of Ron laughing and teasing her, always balancing a knife-edge between flirtation and casual joking, and neither of them ever willing to cross the line. She had always thought he would be the one. But in the end, it was Malfoy, and it doesn't even count. She thinks of Teddy Lupin, so like his dead parents – she thinks of how sweet he is, how cuddly, always smiling. She thinks of her parents, and wonders like she always did at the safehouse, whether they are still alive; she hasn't asked Malfoy, although it's possible he might know. Because what if the answer is that they are dead?

She remembers a lot; sunk in drifts and swells and currents of memory, sweet and sad and funny. It achieves nothing, but at least it eats away the hours until Malfoy's return each day.

Malfoy is gone all the day-lit hours, in Voldemort's service – demoted but still used, watched and tested constantly for signs of disloyalty. It is difficult, to regain the privileges he once had, and Voldemort is nearly as cruel to the followers he is displeased with as he is to his enemies. Or so she gathers from what she sees, and from the little comments here and there that he lets slip, from his shaking hands and the injuries he always returns bearing. They don't talk about it though, not really. They don't talk about how sometimes when he comes back there is still blood on his clothing, and sometimes it is his, but sometimes it is not, and _always_ he locks himself in the bathroom for a very long time afterward.

Hermione never mentions what she hears through the bathroom door; the first slew of muffled, angry curses, and the rough, quickly stifled sobs that follow, half-hidden beneath the sound of rushing water. Hermione has a feeling that the breakdown at the end of every day is old habit for him, and the thought of it turns her stomach for more than one reason. She wonders how long Malfoy has been coming upstairs with blood staining his skin and his clothing. She wonders how long he has been going into his bathroom to try to wash the blood away, as if anything could wash out the blood of the innocent.

Six days into her stay in Malfoy's rooms he catches her staring at him from her dark corner as he locks the door behind him. He turns for the bathroom with a wince, limping over the floor with one foot dragging a little and the blood…the blood on his hands, coating them like crimson gloves. Her stomach is sick and so is her heart. Congealing, darkening blood coats Malfoy's skin sticky from fingertip to elbow, because Voldemort approves when his people revel in the blood and don't _scourgify_ it away. She gulps and her hand comes up to cover her mouth, and he stares at her. Just _stares_.

"Your precious Potter sanctioned this," he says then, thickly, sounding as sickened as her, strain etched in fine lines and dark shadows around his grey eyes, the bit of fringe falling over his forehead marked by a faint streak of dark blood, another smear on his cheekbone. "This blood is on _his_ hands too. So if you're disgusted by me, then…then you're…he…" Malfoy can't even finish, swallowing hard and breathing short and fast, his eyes darting so intent over her face, as if he is peeling back the layers of her and digging into her brain. Hermione looks away from his needy, wounded eyes, her own slipping back down to his hands, which he holds stiffly at his sides. He looks like a doctor who's been forced into an emergency, last-ditch surgery attempt, and failed.

She tries to say something – to tell him _what_ she doesn't know, because disgust _is_ clogging her insides like poison and to know that Harry sanctions it, that Malfoy has to do it, it is _horrifying_ – but nothing comes out except his name. "Malfoy."

Their eyes lock. He waits, as she searches with dry lips for the right thing to say. The thing that…that is _right_. An odd, detached hysteria flails in the back of her head as she stares into the eyes of the man who was forced to violate her, forced to murder, forced to _torture_, all in the name of the Light. And how does he not hate them? How does he not hate himself? How does he not go mad? She stares at him with her mouth hovering open on the verge of words she cannot find, because all she can think about is how doing the right thing has damned him just as surely as doing the wrong thing would have. The person he has tortured or killed just now is no less dead, or hurt, because Malfoy was doing it for the Order, for the greater good.

She feels sick. So sick. So _terribly_ sorry for him.

And Malfoy stands there with his eyes boring into hers, and he waits, and he waits for her to speak, and Hermione says nothing. There is nothing that she can say. Nothing that will erase the horror and make it okay, because it isn't, and it never will be. Hermione does not believe in the greater good. She closes her mouth, her eyes snapping from his to stare unfocused past his left ear. She sees enough, though. Malfoy's bloodied fists clench, and droplets splot viscous and dark on the floor, and his mouth twists and his face twitches. He limps away stiff and furious, and the bathroom door slams behind him hard enough to rattle all the pictures on the walls.

Hermione buries her face in her hands, and when she weeps, for the first time in days her tears aren't a flood of self-pity running over her fingers. No; she thinks perhaps she is crying for the person whose blood coated Malfoy's hands. And yes, even for Malfoy himself. She is so angry. So angry and so sorry, at all of this; everything.

It has been 19 days since Hermione was captured.

She just wants to go home.

* * *

><p>When the nightmares come, late in the night and she can't sleep, he sits at the table with a book and watches over her. Lamp lit and washing him in gold, he stares at his book with blurring eyes, his wand on the table within reach. Sometimes when she wakes in the morning, she sees him there still; slumped forward over the table, fingertips just touching his wand, because even after she falls asleep, she thinks he must stay awake, guarding against the nightmares. His eyes are always bruised around.<p>

But they don't ever speak of it.

There are many things they don't speak of. At first, at least.

* * *

><p><em>Leave a review to feed the muse :)<em>


	5. Part Five

**Edit:** As of the **28th of April 2015**, I have made major changes to this fic, thanks to constructive criticism by a reader. Scenes have been added, and the tone and content of many existing scenes have been altered or expanded upon. I hope that such alterations give a better picture of the dynamic between Draco and Hermione, which previously was not illustrated in a great deal of detail because I was trying to keep this fic short. However, the subject material does not lend itself to brevity, it seems - and in order to make a proper go of achieving what I set out to achieve, I have had to make some changes. I _recommend_ skimming back through the fic from the beginning before reading on, but doing so is not _necessary_. I hope you find the changes I've made to be positive ones!

Liss xx

* * *

><p><span><strong>Part Five<strong>

Twenty-seven days go by since Hermione was first captured, by her count. They are all the exact same in essence since she left the dungeons, and they all drag by with deadening monotony. She no longer has the energy to be truly afraid, or hopeful, or homesick. She feels all these things constantly, but never with any real strength; they are simply the weary background noise to what her existence has become. It is hard to sustain any kind of intensity of feeling when there is no end to anything, when there is no brave escape to keep her going, no possibility of rescue to buoy her up. This is limbo, Hermione tells herself as she stares unseeingly down at the book in her lap. This is purgatory, and she despises it. She is _sick_ of it, of feeling nearly nothing but a hollowed out, aching emptiness. She wants to _scream_, to scream and rage and _tear things apart_, because beneath the emptiness that is drowning her, there is a deep wellspring of suppressed, desperate anger.

But Hermione doesn't scream. Instead she just curls her hands tightly together and squeezes until it hurts, the pain both a distraction and a relief. Hermione is rather certain that is not a healthy coping mechanism, and she really doesn't care. The clock on the wall by the door ticks quietly, and she watches the thin seconds hand spin around the clock face with excruciating slowness, the minute hand even slower. Time seems stretched thin like taffy here, and the more she watches the Merlin-damned clock, the slower it appears to move. She waits for Malfoy to return. And this is what her life has become. It is infuriating, that his return is a much anticipated _event_, but it is frightening being in his rooms without him, where any Death Eater could conceivably force their way in past the wards and locks if they were skilled enough. And…it is _lonely._

Malfoy is not the best company, distracted by his duties as he is – it isn't that he is rude, or awful, she just doesn't know what to _say_ to him half the time – but he is still company. Silent company who never speaks of anything but the absolute necessities lately, but she likes to see him there. Once he has finished washing away the blood and filth of his work – metaphorical and actual – he emerges silently and his presence both eases and elevates the tension in the room. He settles into routine, Hermione notices, once the first week has passed. She isn't sure if it was a routine he had before, or if it is one that has come about thanks to her presence. The clock on the wall ticks toward 5 o'clock, and she watches it and thinks he will be back soon, and then the routine will begin.

The routine.

He comes out of the bathroom after washing, in a fresh shirt and trousers. His eyes skim and cast over her, before he moves to the – locked; she has tried to open it – cabinet that holds decanters of alcohol. He hesitates there, and then turns away, rubbing his hand over his eyes. Instead he moves to the row of windows that make up one wall, beyond which the sun lowers in the sky. Malfoy stands with his arms crossed over his chest and his shoulder leaning into one frame, head tilting tiredly to join it after a while, staring out into the bleak gardens below and the afternoon sky above. Hermione finds herself watching him; tall and lean, white-blonde hair going gold under the stain of afternoon sun creeping into the room, a statue that speaks of weariness and defeat, and an odd vulnerability. If he _were_ a statue, she would name him The Loyal Traitor, she decides with dry whimsy one day, as he turns back to the room with a face that is carved in expressions of self-loathing so deep it startles her.

And then he disapparates, and returns only several minutes later with an array of delicious foods, and she creeps from her huddle in her armchair to join him for a silent dinner. They watch each other as they eat. Eyes flicking and joining and breaking apart – guilt, worry, curiosity, and suspicion. They watch each other, in the end, more than they watch their food. But they don't speak, unless there is something that must be said.

_Pass the salt._

_May I have the gravy boat?_

_Did you get to the drop point today?_

_Do you need anything?_

And then she escapes back to her armchair and watches Malfoy pile the dirty dishes up, apparating to the kitchens and returning empty-handed usually, although several times now he has come back with an armful of linens – fresh bedsheets and pillowslips for the bed she sleeps in. He changes it using magic, while she watches surreptitiously from behind her book. And then he sits down at the table – after a glance at Hermione – and begins to read. Occasionally Malfoy sits at his desk before he picks up a book, and spends an hour writing a lengthy letter. Hermione doesn't ask who he is writing to, but she suspects it is his mother. She doesn't know who else he has to write to. When Malfoy is finished writing his letter he picks it up by one corner, and sets it alight with a flick of his wand, dropping it in a small rubbish bin by his desk and watching it burn away to nothing, his face expressionless. And then he dashes off what seems like just a quick note, and sets it aside to post the next day – she thinks it probably has to pass inspection by another Death Eater before being posted.

At any rate, they spend their evenings in what she could _almost_ call companionable silence, until 10 o'clock sharp, when Hermione takes a bath and crawls into bed. She is never really very tired, but she shuts her eyes and tries to sleep anyway – because there is nothing else to do, and because although she often wakes with nightmares, she craves the blissful nothingness of sleep that comes before the bad dreams. She doesn't know how late Malfoy usually stays up, but whenever she awakes from a nightmare, she sees him there. Lit softly in the lowered lamplight and sitting uncomfortable at the table; sometimes still reading despite the clock saying it is hours past midnight, sometimes blinking sleepily to wakefulness at her with worry printed in his hazy eyes, and sometimes fast asleep and snoring faintly, face smushed into the table and hand on his wand even in his sleep.

He looks so innocent, sleeping.

Rarely, Malfoy has to leave again in the evening, with his face set cold and hard – that blank, expressionless mask shaping his features. He never tells her when he will be back; she supposes he doesn't know himself. But when he returns his footsteps are heavy and weighted with more than just physical exhaustion, and she curls beneath the bedcovers and for a brief moment is afraid he is someone else. _'It's just me,'_ Malfoy says to her half-covered form in a rasping voice, and she pretends that she was not afraid, but asleep. She keeps her eyes shut and stays half-hidden beneath the blankets, because she doesn't want to see the blood that she always fears covers him, whether it be his, or someone else's. She falls asleep on those nights to the sound of water running and the knowledge that whether Malfoy is furiously swearing or crying in broken little hitches, he is suffocating in the horror of what he has to do.

She feels sorry for Malfoy, Hermione has realised. Desperately, achingly sorry for the situation he is in, and what he has to do. She could _never_ do what he does, and she isn't sure if that actually makes him much, much stronger than she is, or merely less-good than her. At first she wants to think it is the latter, but she is coming to think that first assessment was wrong.

But now, now the clock ticks onto 5 o'clock, and chimes five cheery times, and Hermione sits up straighter in the armchair, yanked out of her wandering thoughts. Malfoy will be back shortly, and anticipation always threads a little faster through her blood at this time, because what if he has managed to get to the drop point? Or rather: what if he comes in and says that Voldemort wants to see her? What if he has been discovered? What if she is taken away from his protection? _What if, what if? _That dull and ever-present background fear in her mind picks up just a little – sharper and more urgent. She shifts in her seat, adjusting the pair of striped green and white boxers of Malfoy's, which he has transfigured to be trouser-length for her because it would arouse suspicion for him to acquire her any ordinary clothing. So, she wears his clothing, sized down to fit her – today the striped trousers, and a black tee shirt that she wishes he hadn't shrunk down so much; it is tight on her, and she feels exposed.

She watches the door, with her breath caught in her throat.

It creaks faintly when it opens at seven past five, and Malfoy limps in, a box under one arm and a look of disgust on his face. She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees there is no blood on him, no obvious fresh injury, or sign that he has caused harm. The box is large and flat, scarlet-coloured and tied up with shining silver ribbon, and Hermione is curious peeking over the top of her book. Malfoy shoves the door shut behind him with a careless kick back with one foot, and a wave of his wand resets the wards. He glances at Hermione and his look of disgust blanks away; erased utterly in a second. His eyes go as soft as she ever sees them, which still isn't very, and his mouth shapes into a pressed-together, faint half-smile. There is some kind of deep relief and neediness in his face that she doesn't understand.

"Granger," he says in greeting as he shuts his eyes and sways back into the door, toeing his shoes off with a sigh, breaking his established routine. She stares in silence and his eyes flick back up to hers in her absence of greeting. She manages the barest hint of a smile. It feels strange to speak whenever she does, because she does it so little, but she says his name because he seems to expect a greeting in return, and she doesn't want to seem rude when he is being polite. And it is so _odd_, Hermione thinks, that even in captivity she still worries about social niceties – how _stupid_ of her. But…old habit dies hard.

"Malfoy." She sounds scratchy and her voice breaks embarrassingly over the beginning of his name, and she flushes and looks down at her hands, all tight on the book she holds closed in her lap. She wonders again at the strangeness that she can be embarrassed over her voice going funny, when less than a month ago the man whose name she stumbles over was forced to rape her. People are so strange, she thinks as she wobbles her stiff little smile at him – so polite, so civil, just how her mother taught her to be. Acting as if they were just two friendly room-mates, and not a spy and a prisoner trapped together. Malfoy looks away, down at the scarlet box he has tucked beneath his arm, all worn-thin weariness, and a shadow of disgust.

"I couldn't get to the drop point," he says rather unnecessarily, and his voice is thin and strained. "Sorry. Voldemort…had me working in the dungeons today. And I still don't think he's likely to let me off the grounds."

"The dungeons?" she asks, watching him suspiciously now. This break in routine is strange. Malfoy shoves his shoes over to one side of the door and nods, eyes skittering away from her, throat bobbing as he swallows, his shoulders hunching a little as though a chill has seized him.

"Clearing out the cells," he says succinctly, jaw bunching and shoulders hunching further and she understands then, why he looked at her like that, coming in. He has been killing the prisoners that have no further use to Voldemort, and burning the corpses, and it was not that long ago that _she_ was down there. She remembers the stench of the flesh as it burnt, and a sudden sickness rises in her belly. She clamps her lips hard together before she answers, and he watches her with steady eyes that look as if he expects her disgust to be heaped upon him. As if he would take it willingly.

"I'm sor-" she begins, but Malfoy looks down as soon as he realises what she is saying as if he can't stand to hear it from her lips, as if he doesn't deserve it, and her chin trembles and her throat closes up, and she can't finish. He stands with head bowed, frozen by the door for a moment as silence falls over them, and then heads for the bathroom, tossing the scarlet box tied with silver ribbon carelessly on his desk as he passes it. Her eyes fix on that patch of brightness, on that distraction from what they had just been talking about.

"What is that?" Hermione uncurls herself from the armchair and steps toward it, still curious, only for Malfoy to back-pedal fast and slap a hand down onto the flat, rectangular box. The air around him smells strongly of death and smoke, and she breathes through her mouth, resisting the urge to cover her nose and mouth.

"You don't touch the things on my desk, Granger," he says sharply, and she flinches back from the hard edge in his voice. It is true; he told her early on never to touch anything on his desk, and she…well, she wasn't sure if he had wards on the drawers so she hasn't done anything more than skim through what he leaves lying out on top of the polished wood surface, which wasn't anything interesting. She clasps her hands together, and her eyes meet his for a long moment, and she feels a spark of silly success when he is the one who looks away first.

"What is it?" she asks him quietly, and there is a long pause before he finally, reluctantly, answers her.

"A present," Malfoy says tautly, but the tone in which he says it makes Hermione wonder if there is a body part in there, or a venomous snake. It doesn't seem like a _good _present; somehow there is an air of malice and menace that emanates from it. But that makes Hermione no less curious.

"For who?" She spots a label all twisted sideways, and sees her name scribbled on it, and on old instinct reaches out to flip the label over and read what it says more easily, head already tilting as she tries to make out the writing.

"Granger, _don't_," Malfoy begins in a pained voice as he pushes her hand away at the same time as he yanks the box back from her, but it's too late. Her eyes have already skimmed over the few words inked on the silver label, without even needing to turn it over.

'_For the lovely Miss Granger'_ it read, in a flowing, neat script, _'to wear at her Master's pleasure.'_

Hermione's blood runs cold and she lets out a choked gasp and stumbles back a step, as if it _had_ been a venomous snake or human organ. At her Master's pleasure. The words are burnt into her and she cannot make sense of them at all, stunned and shaking. "I…_what?_" she says, and her eyes are wounded and horrified on Malfoy's as she clutches her hands together in front of her, pressing the clasp of them into her stomach. "_What…_what does that mean? Who – who is…?" She has sudden visions of being taken away from Malfoy and given to someone else, and in there is…something that…she doesn't even know. She pushes her hands harder into her stomach, feeling unsteady and sick. "My…master? But…who…?" Fear makes her knees watery and her mind blank and stupid. She thinks for a moment Voldemort must be giving her to someone else.

Malfoy flinches; his hand flexes on the box in a little, angry spasm, and he looks away, out the window with sickened eyes. His jaw clenches and relaxes before he answers, and the words sound wrenched out of him as though they physically hurt to say. "_Me_, Granger. _Me. _I'm…I'm your fucking master."

"…Oh." Of course he is. Hermione hadn't thought…she is so used to thinking of them as…co-conspirators in stuck in this together, that she forgets that in reality she is his slave and he is her master. "Of course."

They stand silently together a moment, Malfoy staring fixedly out the window at his left, and Hermione staring down at the scarlet box, the awkwardness between them palpable. Hermione is rather sure she shouldn't want to know what is in the box anymore, but…she does, perversely. "Is it from…_him_?"

The muscles in Malfoy's jaw bunch up again, and his face is set in a grim kind of glare at nothing as he nods shortly. "Yes. He thought…I don't know what the fuck he thought. Rewarding me for doing such a Merlin-damned good _job_ –" His fists bunch and he snarls the word and looks for a moment as if he might lose control of himself, before sucking in a short huff of air and leaning forward, splaying his hands flat on the desk and hanging his head. He doesn't seem to care how wretched and nakedly miserable he looks to her. "– Doing such a good job today, maybe. K-killing all the prisoners that…that are dying, and…and burning… Burning all the _fucking_ bodies. _Fuck_." He sounds as if he is going to cry as he lifts a hand and slams it back against the desk, breathing hard through parted lips.

Hermione doesn't know what to say. She just stands there awkwardly, with an odd little ache behind her eyes that tells her she wants to cry, only nothing is coming out.

"What's – what's in the box?" she asks after a long moment, and he stares at her with red-rimmed eyes and makes a funny, choked laugh of surprise. His mouth is a slew of bitterness.

"I – I don't know, Granger. Why? Have you decided to play your part prop–"

"_Don't_," Hermione warns him sharper than she thought she was capable of right now. "Don't you _dare._"

Malfoy deflates instantly, apologetic and slumped-weary, shame radiating off him. He lifts a hand from the desk again, this time to wipe at his eyes, which are damp grey and bloodshot.

"Sorry. Sorry," he says thickly, and sniffs wet. "Sorry. I…" But there is no excuse, and she is glad he sees that, trailing away to silence without giving one. His lips press together and he makes a little shaky inhale-exhale that sounds like he is trying not to cry, and on instinct Hermione lays her hand lightly over his on the desk. She isn't thinking at all, just giving comfort as she would to anyone she knew, who she wasn't comfortable enough with to hug. Her fingertips are cool and his are warm. Their eyes meet, and lock. This isn't just anyone; it is _Malfoy_, and her fingers are settled gentle over his on the desk, and she sucks in a sudden, dizzying breath at the realisation.

"It's okay," she says weakly to Malfoy, and then pulls her hand back, squeezing it discreetly into a fist to get rid of the lingering feel of his skin on hers – warm and dry and soft, it wasn't unpleasant, but… Well, it feels strange. She looks down at the box instead of at him – she can feel his eyes on her – and reaches out, dragging it over toward her.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to see what it is," she says, steeling herself for the sight of something awful, but she wants to know. _Needs_ to know. Even if it is awful and she wishes she hadn't seen it, her curiosity right now is overwhelming and needs to be sated. If she doesn't know _what _it is exactly, she'll always imagine the worst, most abhorrent thing it could be. She'll always wonder. She needs to know.

"Granger…I really don't think that's a good idea."

"You're probably right," she agrees, and pulls the ribbon free with several sharp tugs. Malfoy is silent at her side, and she can feel his uneasy disapproval, but he makes no move to stop her. She lifts the lid off, and opens out the silver tissue paper to find an array of things that make her eyes go wide and her cheeks flush hot. She is afraid to touch them, mostly lest the items be charmed or cursed somehow, but even after Malfoy performs an unasked for scan that finds them clean of curses and charms, she still doesn't.

Laid out on top of what looks like lingerie – all peach-coloured lace, silk, and ribbon – are _things_. Hermione is certainly not experienced, but she is hardly ignorant or naïve about sex, either. She is rather certain she can guess what most of the things are; fine silver chains and clamps, soft black rope and a blindfold, what looks like a collar, and other…even more embarrassing _things_ designed to inflict pain and pleasure, along with a few frightening instruments that look purely designed to inflict torture.

Hermione slams the lid back down, caught somewhere between embarrassment, because _Malfoy_ and _sex things_ and _oh my god_, and disgust, because Voldemort had given these to Malfoy to force her to wear while he raped her repeatedly. She wonders if Voldemort thinks Malfoy has her docile under an Imperius, or if he thinks Malfoy likes her to fight, and scream, and…

"Oh _Merlin_…" she gasps, as the disgust wins out by a landslide, and she feels _ill_, flattening a hand to her middle and turning away. "Get rid of it. Please."

"I can't." The words snap out of Malfoy brusquely, angrily, and she looks up to see him with his eyebrows all drawn down together and his lips pursed slightly, frowning fixedly at the box. Like it is a maths problem he cannot solve, instead of a little box of horrors.

"Why not?" The words rush out of her, hurried by fear, because she knows why already, although she cannot admit it to herself.

"My master might expect us to…" Malfoy pauses and his mouth works without a sound coming out, his features strained and cheeks flushing faintly. He stops, and looks out the window again, squinting into the sunlight that streaks his face. Hermione's hands ball up into fists as she expects with a sense of dread what will come next. "Use it," he finishes coldly but with a slight unsteadiness to the words, unable to look at her as he says them. "At – at another revel, or something similar, perhaps. He…likes his _entertainment._"

"No. No. _No_, Malfoy, I won't. I _can't_…" Panic bubbles up in Hermione as she remembers what it was like last time, with the pain, and the humiliation, and the violation of having her control over her own body taken away from her. The actual act of Malfoy…penetrating her…had been the easiest part to bear. It was everything _else_ that went with it that…that she couldn't stand. That is what makes her want to scream at the thought of going through it again. She shakes her head hard. "_No_." Her eyes are pleading on him and she catches at his sleeve without thinking, fingers twisting in the white cotton. _Begging_ him. "Malfoy. _Please._ I _can't_."

He stares at her blankly for a moment.

"_Please_ –"

"It's not up to _me_, Granger," he says harshly, the blankness on his face breaking into defensive anger, and a hint of hurt. "It's not – if it were up to me you wouldn't have to do anything you didn't fucking well want to. But it's not. If the Dark Lord tells me to bring you to a revel and – and use th-those…" Malfoy stutters to a halt, and rubs a hand over his brow, head bowed and shoulders slumped, other hand using the desk as a prop. He is pallid and his eyes are sick, his mouth is all twisted and shaped with anger and revulsion. "Then I will, if it is the only way to keep us both alive. Whether you like it or not." He pauses after saying that – freezes a moment – and then swears harsh and angry under his breath and turns away sharply, muttering something that Hermione can't make out as she stares at him, arms hugging herself tight. His shoulders flex and hunch, his back to her, and his hands sweep up through his hair in frantic little motions.

"_Fuck_," he swears then, loudly, and turns enough to lash out and knock the box violently off the desk. His whole frame _vibrates_ with anger, and his breath comes hard, face contorting in a grim anger. "This is what I have been reduced to! _This!_" Hermione stumbles back a hasty few steps, hugging herself tighter and staring at him with big, worried eyes. She doesn't know if she should retreat and let this sudden rage run its course, try to soothe him, or tell him briskly to snap out of it. She doesn't know if he's angry at _her_, or…

"He's got me fucking playing his games…got me being _part_ of…_'Whether you like it or not'_ –" Malfoy quotes what he said only a moment ago, apparently disgusted by his own words. Hermione watches him cautiously, eyes flicking between his wand hand and his face. "I – I didn't mean that, Granger. I'd really rather you didn't get us killed but – but I'm not going to force you to do anything. I'm not going to let him make me…any more a part of this than I already am." He means the words he says – she can tell by the resigned, nearly relieved tone he has, and the determined set of his shoulders. And it surprises her, her eyebrows arching.

"If you want me to get rid of these –" He waves a hand at the contents of the box, now strewn around it on the floor. "– Then I will."

"Put it all away. Somewhere out of sight," Hermione says before she can rethink the decision, her jaw tight and her fists clenched at her sides. She feels all numb and stiff, and she wants to curl up into a ball and cry until she runs out of tears, but instead she lifts her chin and looks Malfoy in the eye. Her voice is unsteady but certain. "I – I don't want to die."

So now she has another possibility to dread.

But the look Malfoy gives her, as she forces herself to kneel down and help him gather up the contents of the box, is filled with a deep respect. It makes her feel stronger, somehow.

* * *

><p>The next day he comes back without blood on his clothes and with a large brown paper package in his arms, tired and weary but with something <em>good<em> glinting in his eyes, unlike the last time he'd come back with a package. Hermione gets up at the sight of him, laying her book aside and wandering closer, hanging onto one of the posts at the end of the four-poster bed and eyeing him curiously. Malfoy stops by the table, looking nervous and uncomfortable as he meets her eyes.

"You haven't been out of these four walls in…in a very long time. I - I should have thought. This is hard enough for you without being stuck in the same room without end. Especially when I'm gone most of the day," Malfoy begins apologetically, still holding that large brown paper parcel in his arms. "And while I can't exactly take you wandering around without suspicion, or attracting attention we don't want…well, I got you these," he says hesitantly, holding out the parcel to her, and she takes it, curious. It's soft and squishy, and Hermione lays it down on the table and tears the paper open, to reveal…a soft grey woollen cloak, and a pair of warm, practical boots that look very close to her size. He shoots her a hopeful look. "I thought maybe you'd like to walk in the gardens tonight? After everyone is asleep?"

"I…" Hermione lifts the cloak out of the paper wrapping, and marvels at how soft it is. She looks out the window at the gardens, stained in reds and pinks by the setting sun, and then at Malfoy, standing there tired and pallid in the evening light, watching her hopefully, all anticipation. He looks nearly sweet, if exhausted and worn, and that he noticed how claustrophobic she is feeling and wanted to do something about it _is_ sweet, inasmuch as anything in this situation is sweet. "I - yes. Yes, I'd like that."

"Good." Malfoy relaxes a little, and then turns away, scooping up his wand with a sigh as he straightens his shoulders. "There's a, ah, I have to go out, tonight. A mission. But I should be back here around midnight, if all goes to plan. I'll wake you up when it's a good time to go out, shall I?"

"I… Are you sure? We don't have to go out tonight if you have to um, do things." Hermione doesn't like thinking about what he does on those missions; she tries not to think about them at all, if she can, which isn't as often as she'd like. Malfoy shakes his head, fiddling nervously with his wand, and for a moment Hermione feels stupidly as though she's been asked on a date. She chases away the silly thought and takes out the brown boots in the package. They're low-heeled and ankle-high lace-up boots, lined with soft pygmy puff fur, and they look very slightly too big for her. It will be easy enough to shrink them if need be, though. They're lovely and luxurious, and like the cloak, undeniably expensive. Hermione doubts Malfoy had to pay for them though; Death eaters get things for free, one way or another.

"No, it's fine. I want to. I probably won't be able to sleep tonight anyway," he insists as he backs away, and her stomach turns. Will he come home - _back_, not home, she corrects herself - drenched in blood? Or wounded? Or…at all? A catch of fear leaps up in her at the thought of Malfoy being killed on a mission, and she being…thrown to the wolves. "I'll see you tonight." She nods, clutching the boots to her like a teddy bear.

"B-be careful, Malfoy." He gives her an odd look, eyes resting heavy on her for a long, taut moment.

"I always am." The door clicks quietly shut behind him, the sound of the lock clacking home coming next, and then Hermione is alone in the evening light.

She puts the boots down on top of the cloak, strewn over the table on top of the torn paper wrapping, and walks to the window, parting the net curtains and peering out over the gardens. They look so pretty by the evening light…but she imagines they'll look pretty by the moonlight too. Her nose is nearly pressed to the glass as she surveys the herb garden, and rose bushes, and the winding pathways screened by flowering shrubs and bushes, and right in the very centre, the small hedge maze she has memorised the route of. She thinks of being able to be down there, and it feels _good_, like a little fragment of freedom.

* * *

><p>Malfoy closes the side door of the huge manor quietly behind them, and then turns to Hermione, the dark stains of exhaustion and strain beneath his eyes highlighted by the moonlight. She had been sitting awake waiting for him when he'd come in, and there had been blood stains on his clothing. Hermione had told him then that they didn't have to go out, but he'd said he wanted to, and so did she, of course. But he looks like utter shit, half-dead on his feet, and it worries her. "Well. Where do you want to go, Granger? It's up to you, tonight."<p>

It's half past one, and Hermione stands bundled in her cloak and boots, feeling the fresh, cold night air whisk over her cheeks and chill her nose, and looks around. This part of the garden is open to the night, with the formal low herb garden to the left and the perfectly well-manicured roses sprawling out at the right. It's lovely, and beautiful, but very…exposed. Hermione feels naked and vulnerable. It's a horrible feeling to have, and it infuriates her that she feels it. But she feels it nonetheless, and she doesn't see the point in making herself feel nervy and miserable just to try to get over this agoraphobic feeling. This trip out of Malfoy's room is supposed to be fun, not another ordeal.

"The - the maze; I want to go into the maze," she says quietly - uncertainly, feeling strange about asserting herself so bluntly. But Malfoy just nods agreeably, shoving his hands in the pockets of the coat he wears instead of a cloak. His hair shines white beneath the moon, and his eyes are little black pools ringed with silver.

"As you wish," he says with a dry sort of charm, and she sets off in that direction, leading the way until he catches up with just three long strides, before falling in at her side.

They walk there in silence, close beside one another - close enough that their arms bump together now and then. It's…_nice._ The only sounds are those of small nocturnal animals, their footsteps whispering on the dew-damp grass, and their breath, puffing softly in and out. Hermione feels like she can breathe easily for the first time in over a month, and it's amazing. She nearly feels like she can _forget_, the weight of everything that's happened lessening, just a little. Her cloak is warm, and her boots are warmer, carefully shrunk by Malfoy to the exact right size as he'd knelt at her feet, hair still damp from his hurried shower. She hugs herself and smiles faintly, eyes drifting up to the big round moon unhidden by cloud - the night clear and still and smattered with bright stars. Sometimes, everything is all right, even now. Even here.

"Do you know the way to the centre?" he asks her, a sideways glance down at her in the moonlight as they near the maze entrance, and she nods slowly.

"I _think_ so. I've been studying it, from our- your room." She swears inwardly at the stupid slip of her tongue. It makes things sound all…wrong. It's not their bedroom, not really. It's _his_, and she is a prisoner, no matter how comfortable or safe he tries to make her feel there. But he doesn't make any sign that he even noticed her slip, thank Merlin.

"I have been too, for months and months. Not on purpose - it's just the only interesting thing to look at out the damn windows. I've never bothered coming down here though." He grins briefly, and it's a transformation that makes him look suddenly young and happy for a flicker of time. "Do you think we'll be able to figure it out between us?"

"I think so," she says again, still shy and uncertain when she speaks, because that's how she always feels now - even now, as close to freedom as she's been in a month. And then they are at the entrance, and she leads the way at Malfoy's urging, going in without a pause, reviewing her mental image of the small maze confidently in her mind's eye. "Come on then…let's see how well we do, Malfoy."

They get horribly lost, and it takes them nearly an hour to find the middle, but oh, it's _fun. _Hermione even laughs, when Malfoy scrambles undignified up to the top of the hedge, then accidentally steps on a twisted branch that's too weak to support his weight - and falls straight _into_ the hedge, requiring her to haul him out bodily. She giggles despite herself then, as she tries to pull him out of the hedge, half-hysterical little sounds she tries to stifle in the folds of her cloak, and when he collapses beside her his chest is shaking from quiet, wheezing laughter too..

Hermione sprawls down on the grass in the centre of the maze, when they _finally_ reach it. Malfoy dries up the dew for her with a charm before the wet can soak into her cloak, and the charm makes the ground feel like it's been soaking up the midsummer sun. It's warm beneath her, and the stars and moon are bright, and she lies on her back and looks up at them while Malfoy settles beside her, sitting tailor-fashion and plucking idly at daisies. They don't talk at much, just whispers back and forth now and then about constellations, and shooting stars, and _there - right there, that's a Muggle satellite_. She lies with her head pillowed on her hands and the sky soaring up above her. Time passes without meaning, and peace settles in her bones.

Then a dark shape whisks across the sky, and Hermione frowns, tension seizing her as she props herself up on her elbows. "What's - what was that?" Malfoy looks up, eyes tracing the sky until he spots the dark shape as it sweeps back into sight from behind some trees.

"Patrol," he says succinctly, and then reaches out and gently lays a daisy chain crown over her hair, with an awkward little smirk, his cheeks darkening slightly in the moonlight as he arranges it to his satisfaction. Her own feel overheated too, and she lowers her gaze, feeling oddly tight in her chest. "There. Perfect," he says dryly, of the daisy crown he wove for her, then: "We should go back in. It's nearly three, and I have an early start tomorrow."

* * *

><p>Hermione is woken from hazy dreams of good things and white petals to swearing and pain – not her own for once, thank Merlin for small favours. But there is still a moment where she is filled with half-asleep panic that terrible things will happen, shaken rudely into wakefulness as Malfoy hisses out her name amongst a slew of curses.<p>

"Fucking _Merlin_ this fucking _hurts_. _Granger. _Wake the _fuck_ up, Granger, I need – need some ass-ass-assistance here," he gets out thickly, and she is struggling upright and rubbing her eyes, staring at him with frightened, bleary eyes.

"_Wha'?_" she slurs frantically as she shoves the last stubborn locks of hair off her face, and then her gazes focus on him; Malfoy, shirtless, with blood smearing his face, and pain crinkling his brow. "_Malfoy!_ What in Merlin's name –!"

Her mind flashes and flickers before she remembers everything coherently. He had gone out shortly before she'd gone to bed. There had been a revel planned, which Malfoy had told her about over dinner earlier in the night. Voldemort had apparently told Malfoy to bring Hermione to it, and he'd made excuses to Voldemort – said that she wasn't up to the task, as he'd been rather too rough on her the night before. Which had put a mental image in Hermione's head that had made her feel sick – but besides that she had also been worried that Malfoy would get in trouble for not giving Voldemort what he'd wanted. _'_

_I said – I said I would,_" she had offered uncertainly, with her appetite suddenly vanished to nowt as nausea raged up. Malfoy had just shaken his head and shrugged as he'd forked up a green bean, and said,_ 'Don't worry about it, Granger; he didn't seem to mind.'_

Apparently, he _had _minded.

"Malfoy!" Hermione scrambles up out of the bedcovers, onto the cold rug beside the bed in bare feet, and he is staring at her glazedly with huge grey eyes, his face all blood. Her hands hover in the air, wanting to reach out and steady him – touch his face, grab his arm, but she isn't sure where or how he is hurt. He coughs – there is the heavy scent of alcohol on his breath bursting in a suffocating cloud against her face – and then nearly doubles over, his hand flailing out and landing on her shoulder. He leans heavily on her for a moment, gasping raggedly, before pushing himself upright once more as she says his name again, urgent. The stench of alcohol makes her crinkle her nose as he lifts his head and stares blindly at her.

"_Malfoy_. What happened?" She is clear and firm, like a teacher talking to a rather dim preschooler. He blinks and staggers back a step unsteadily, hand grabbing not at her now, but one of the bed posts, fingers clenching white-knuckled around it as he wrenches in wobbling gusts of air. He looks gone behind the eyes; glazed and stunned, and she is overflowing with a sharp, bubbling worry.

"I – he had me – had me fucking _flogged_, Granger," Malfoy says dazedly, swaying on his feet, and her lips part as she sucks in a shocked breath. "He had me _flogged_," he repeats, and his pupils are pinpricks in his irises and he is shocky and shaking. "For - forty lashes. Salazar's sake, it _hurts_ so fucking _bad_." He sounds almost ridiculously _indignant_ about it all, and if the situation weren't so serious Hermione would nearly want to laugh at him.

Instead she makes her sleep-dulled body _move_, rounding Malfoy to take in the damage to his back – one hand gripping his upper arm to keep him from turning with her, which he tries to do. He is not just half-dead on his feet, but most definitely very drunk. Hermione's eyes pop wide as she takes in the devastation to his back, and she makes a strangled, sick sound. The pale skin of Malfoy's back is now a crisscross mangled quilt of raw, bleeding flesh – laid open to the yellow fat beneath the skin in some places, and she gulps down bile. It must be agonisingly painful – she is amazed that he made it all the way up to their room without passing out.

_Their room_ – she realises she'd thought, blanching at how easily it has become that in her mind, and then pushes such irrelevant things out of her head and focuses on the man barely staying upright in front of her.

"Lie down," she tells him, because if he falls he will regret it, and she isn't sure if she will be able to get him upright again without magic, and she isn't sure that she should rely on his wand working properly for her. She would rather not try to levitate Malfoy and end up exploding him accidentally.

"Wh-where?" he asks through gritted teeth, looking uncertainly over his torn up shoulder at her. She gives him a scathing _look_ that Ron and Harry are well familiar with. They call it the 'just do whatever she says, mate' look, and cower beneath it, always complainingly obedient when she levels it on them. Dealing with men who have been hurt – usually through their own stupidity – is second nature to Hermione, and she slips into the role of the bossy caregiver with ease, forgetting herself in it. It is _nice_, in a strange kind of way, to don the mantle of carer and have everything else cease to matter, for a little while at least.

"On the _bed_, you idiot!" She pushes at his upper arm – skin warm beneath her hand and marked with sticky blood spatter – and it is like trying to shift a boulder; he is essentially immovable, because although he sways forward slightly at her push, he rocks back into place again immediately. "Malfoy, you _git_. Stop it! You need to lie down before you _fall down_," she snaps at him, and he twists and throws her a confused, amused, pain-drenched look.

"So kitten has remembered she has claws?" Malfoy gets out with a choked half-laugh. "And all it took was me getting – _fuck_ – shredded to bloody bits. _Shit. _Well worth it. A bargain, really." Sarcasm tints his last few words, and the half of his mouth that she can see makes a rictus of a smile. Hermione just tsks and shakes her head at him, out of patience and half-worried he is going to say something that will _hurt_, that will ruin everything, that will _remind _her, that will send her into a tailspin of flashbacks and horror that ends with her huddled in the armchair and him without any help.

"You're _drunk_, Malfoy. Shut up," she says with barely a shake to her voice, and for a miracle, he does. He doesn't resist her subsequent awkward manhandling of him either, although it takes several minutes and a great deal of pained whimpers and grunts to get him facedown on the bed. She places his wand on the bedside table, with an aim to try using it after she has gotten Malfoy comfortable; it feels friendly enough in her hand, but she thinks she will practice with a few simple charms before she attempts to heal him with it.

"'s warm…" he slurs muffled into the bed, lying where she had been before he'd woken her, and she shifts uncomfortable on her feet at that. "Nice," he mumbles, the half of his mouth that she can see curving up in a wounded, drunken smile, and she stares at him helplessly for a moment. Still in his shoes, arms bent so that his hands make loose fists by his head, which is turned to one side so that he can breathe – and gaze at her with one bloodshot, bleary eye.

"I'll take your shoes off," she tells him instead of making the quip about how it was nice and warm because he'd stolen her spot, which had risen automatically to her tongue. She stays herself from saying it because he is Malfoy not Harry or Ron, and it makes her stupidly, suddenly, uncomfortable right through. He gives a grunt of affirmation, and she fumbles with his shoes and keeps being distracted by his back. It is still bleeding here and there, sluggish seeping that makes her stomach turn, and her fingers slip and stumble on his shoelaces as her eyes keep flicking back to the destruction wreaked on his once-smooth skin. His breath comes in shallow, hitching gasps, and his lips are pressed hard together, and that distracts her too as she struggles to yank his shoes off.

A thought occurs to her as she gets water from the bathroom, having rummaged through the cabinets and cupboards in fruitless search of any disinfecting agents – of course a wizarding residence wouldn't have any handy Muggle things like that. It is a thought that Hermione doesn't like much, and she gnaws her lips full of worry over it.

"I _can_ heal you, can't I?" she asks Malfoy nervously, as she sets the bowl of warm water and a soft cloth down on the bedside table. His silence says enough. Oh god no. "_Malfoy_." His name is a plea on her lips, filled with sympathy and horror and soul-deep weariness. But then what did she expect; she should have realised that from the start. _Stupid_.

Hermione's fists clench at her sides in her anger, and water from the cloth she had dipped in the bowl runs down her green and white striped trousers and drips onto her foot. "_Shit,_" she says, and she is talking about more than just her wet trousers. She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath, and when she looks at him again, Malfoy's fringe has fallen over his one visible eye. His face is little but a fall of hair and bitten lips. She shifts the wet cloth from her right hand to her left, and leans forward and pushes his fine, pale hair back for him with warm, damp fingers.

"So. What _can_ I do?" she asks Malfoy as she straightens, angry but resigned, and she doesn't understand the nuances of his expression before he speaks again.

"Cleaning the wounds and binding them up should be acceptable to – to my master," he tells her in a quiet tone, lone grey eye thoughtful on her behind the pain.

"All right," she says faintly, her eyes skimming over the brutality inflicted on his back, feeling sick to her stomach at the thought of touching it, at the thought of causing him pain, of… She swallows hard and nods, voice firmer. "All right. I can do that."

His wand works well for her – if well means that she doesn't blow anything up. It feels friendly enough to her hand, but is weak – the charms she tries only work about half the time, and when they do work, they are pitiful compared to what she could accomplish with her own wand. But several numbing charms later she is left staring at his back with her hands fisted at her hips, biting the tip of her tongue lightly and wishing she had taken the time to learn some kind of cleansing charm - complicated spells - rather than having lazily relied on her ability to always have Muggle antiseptics on hand. It's too late now though.

She raids Malfoy's alcohol cabinet in the end – it will be _wasting_ the firewhiskey to use it on his back, he laments through gritted teeth, and she – flushed with a bolstering shot or three of the stuff herself – pours a generous drizzle of it into his mouth. He laughs and mumbles something incoherent after swallowing, her name in the muddle somewhere, his eyes shut and skin damp with sweat, shivering from reaction to having his wounds cleaned of debris first with magically boiled water.

Malfoy hasn't made any of the process easy, despite his odd, drunken cheerfulness in the face of what has to be sheer agony. He had refused to let Hermione _stupefy_ him, and she had said that she couldn't trust him to keep still and she couldn't have him moving, and in the end they had settled for magically lashing his arms to the bedposts in some awful mimicry of bondage. It keeps him still though, which is the important part. The sight of his arms stretched across the bed in a horizontal parody of crucifixion is unsettling though.

"Just fucking do it, Granger," he mumbles, and she makes a whimper, stand at his back with the bottle tilting nearly enough, but not quite.

"I don't know if the numbing charms took well enough."

"It'll have to do. I've taken worse. _Done_ worse." He grits out the last bit with an angry self-loathing, and although the words make her burn hot and think of what he did to her, with an embarrassed sort of violated horror, she doesn't think he is talking about her. Actually. She bites her tongue again, harder this time – enough that it twinges reproachfully at her. "Just do it."

So she does.

He clamps his mouth shut on a scream - a yell of pain that makes Hermione jerk the bottle back up and stare at him wide-eyed and apologetic, her hands trembling, sweat making them clammy. The alcohol runs in rivulets over his ruined back, seeking out the channels of his wounds, and he turns his face into the pillow and yells again, stifled and wordless. The wiry muscles in his shoulders and arms flex and slide beneath the skin as he wrenches at his bonds, and Hermione swallows hard and watches him in misery.

She should just keep going, Hermione supposes. Get it all over with quickly, rather than draw it out. She would ask Malfoy what he would prefer, but he is rather too busy making anguished sounds into the bed. Sweat breaks out under her armpits and on her forehead, hot at the nape of her neck and above her upper lip, and she apologises as she bathes his back in alcohol, and listens to his screams. She tells him to hold on. That it won't take much longer. That he's doing so well.

She isn't sure if it helps him to hear that or if he even notices through the pain, but it helps her a little. Helps her cope as she trickles the liquid on his skin and watches him tense as stiff as if she has sent electricity surging through him, hears him make anguished sounds into the bed. Hermione is weak and wobbly as a half-set jelly by the time she is done, tears stabbing up in her eyes. Malfoy is silent, except for his sobbing breaths.

"It's done," she says feebly and lifts the bottle to her lips. It burns a path down to her stomach. "It's _done_." Relief saturates her and she can see Malfoy's muscles unwind and he stops pulling at the binds holding him still. Collapsing all boneless and letting out a shaky sigh from a throat screamed horribly hoarse. The sheet around him is patched wet with water and alcohol, and she nearly forgets to release his bonds as she stares at one splotch which looks like a hummingbird.

"Thank fucking _Merlin_ it's over," Malfoy croaks, lifting his head from the mattress. "Took you bloody long enough to do it," he complains then, and he sounds so much like Ron for a moment that Hermione makes a startled noise that could be a laugh, or maybe a sob. It hurts in so many different ways.

_Everything_ hurts, for a moment. Every_one _hurts, and Hermione hugs herself tight and tries not to cry. She fails. She sits down on the damp bed by Malfoy's hip and lets the sobs shake her shoulders and the tears trace runnels down her cheeks and drip off her jaw. She clutches the firewhiskey bottle pointlessly in one hand and shakes with the force of her grief and hurt. For Malfoy, and for Ron and Harry and the others who she knows must think her dead or worse, and for the dead women in the dungeon, and the people Malfoy has hurt and killed, and - and for _herself_.

"Damnit," Malfoy complains and then hisses, and the bed shifts and Hermione struggles to keep her balance, glancing up and swiping at her salt-sticky damp cheeks even as her tears continue to fall.

"Oh! Be careful!" she cries in a snotty, gasping voice, and grabs at his arm as he struggles onto all fours. "D-don't – you'll hurt yourself!" Her breath whoops unevenly in and shudders out again involuntarily; embarrassingly caught in her sobbing fit and unable to quell it completely. "Oh god I'm a wreck…Jesus…I'm sorry…" she says through a veil of tears, in wobbling fluctuations of breath, shoulders hitching and chest catching and hurting. It is as though the floodgates have been opened, and she can do nothing but ride out the barrage.

She can't even stop long enough to take a swig of firewhiskey, and Malfoy nicks it neatly off her as he settles on the bed beside her with a strangled groan. He sits back a little bit further than her, so that his knees settle as tidily over the edge of the bed as hers. Wrinkles from the bedding are imprinted on his cheek and temple, and his lips are raw and bloodied, and alcohol makes a sheen on them over the blood. "I-I-I'm suh-suh-sorry, Malfoy," she hiccups through her flood of crying, and unexpectedly he smiles with those bloodied lips, lopsided and gentle, all written through with drunkenness and hints of pain.

"You – you do this when – when I'm pissed and hurt," he says of her sobbing, and necks the bottle. Coughs and makes a harsh little _ha _as the firewhiskey no doubt blazes a trail through his innards. She looks up to meet his eyes, and his eyelashes are spiky with wetness and his irises look dark by the lamplight. "Have to do it right now when I'm –" he goes on, and she moves to apologise through her miserable, embarrassing tears, and he swears and explains. "– Fuck. No, no it's fine. Don't apologise. Really, Granger. Just…"

She jolts in her skin with sudden fright as his arm snakes naked and hot around the back of her shoulders, and his voice is scratchy and dry. "…I'm not quite with it, am I? I can't give you proper comfort, and such. Or whatever. You know." She doesn't really know, but she nods anyway, and goes with Malfoy's unexpected tug as he pulls her close to him. She bumps up to the feverish heat of sweat-damp skin, the hardness of spare fat and lean muscle beneath. _Malfoy_. And she can't think. He is all pulled and pushed and pressed against her like _then_, only it isn't _then_ it is _now_.

"Oh," she says on an exhale, because he is hot and solid and real, and Merlin it is _nice_. His fingers curl around her upper arm, his arm bracing along her back as it shudders with sobs, and if she lets her head rest – she does – then it tucks neatly beneath his jaw, her cheek pressed to his chest just below the faint jut of his collarbone. She can feel the rise and fall of his breaths rasping in and out, up and down. She can feel the pump of his heart; all that blood, ever-moving, never stopping. Lub-dub. Her hands stay curled back in her lap and she doesn't touch him, and she cries with pathetic wretchedness until her nose is running snot over her lip and she feels sick to her stomach.

And Malfoy _does_ give Hermione proper comfort with that silent, tight half-hug – not that comfort is much good to her. It doesn't change anything. But…he is there, and that is _something_.

Finally her tears dry up, and with a last shuddering breath, her wretched sobbing comes to a hitching close. She can hear the reverberation of Malfoy's heart beating against her cheek and ear, and his fingers rub little circles on her upper arm through the tee shirt of his that she wears. The position suddenly seems horribly, horrendously intimate, and awkward beyond belief. Hermione gulps down a lungful of air and jerks away from him – his arm eases away from her immediately, and they are left sitting side by side, thighs and knees nudging together on the bed. She lifts eyes that feel swollen and tender to his, and his face is still and solemn, his gaze digging into hers with an intensity that swiftly melts away to a cool, detached kind of concern. The air is thick, and Hermione feels hollowed out and insubstantial in it, like an empty seedpod. Tears gone, she is an exhausted, worn husk, and his eyes are too clear and too steady on hers. She drops her gaze.

"I should bandage your back," she says abruptly, and stands up with jerky, awkward movements, feeling stiff from sitting awkwardly, and oddly off-balance. Malfoy doesn't say anything, just grunts acknowledgement and takes a long swig from the bottle of firewhiskey, which is now nearly empty; she doesn't know how drunk he is exactly, but she suspects the answer is: _very_. She clears her throat and then tries to use his wand to transfigure a pillowslip into neat rolls of stretchy bandage, and it only takes her several tries, a little swearing, and Malfoy's obvious amusement.

"Do you want me to do it?" he asks at one point, a corner of his mouth tipping up.

""No! You're drunk, and that makes things go _wrong_. You certainly won't do any better than me, and you're more likely to blow us up," she snaps back, frustrated at the stupid transfiguration spell now and made snippy with it. She catches his lopsided flash of a grin out of the corner of her eye, her own lips twitch in response. She forces them down into a concentrated frown, and focuses on the bandages, getting them right this time. Hermione's crow of success is involuntary and swiftly stifled, but she knows he hears before she bottles it, and her cheeks flame up.

But Malfoy just sits obediently, wincing as she gets him to lift his arms up slightly so she can wind the bandage around beneath them. Her fingers brush over his skin as she bandages his torso, from shoulders to lower back, and she is acutely aware of all the little touches. Of the smooth, hard angles and planes of his chest and abdomen under her palms, and the ragged, uneven wounds of his shredded back as she so carefully smoothes the bandage down into place. It takes an awful lot of bandaging, and she isn't sure it's the best thing to do – his wounds will weep overnight and that will make the bandage hard to remove – but she doesn't feel right about just leaving them open to the air while he is sleeping either. He could hurt himself, couldn't he?

So bandages it is, and if she needs to soak them off, then magic will help with that, won't it, Hermione thinks. "All done," she says quietly at last, and falters a small half-smile, eyes flicking to him and fast away again.

"Thank you, Granger," he says simply and too sincere. She shrugs, staring down at her bare toes, twiddling his wand around and around in her hands. She both wishes that she hadn't cried herself to a snotty wreck on him, and feels better for doing so. As if some small part of her burden has dissipated, and it feels easier to stand straight. She doesn't know what to say or do now, though. She feels as though something crucial has changed in the dynamic between them. Like one of the walls separating them has just been demolished, and while she has extra room to move, she isn't sure she likes it. And then Malfoy seizes the tip of his wand in a pincer grip to still her aimless twirling, and automatically she looks at him.

"Do you want a drink?" he asks her, a smirk twisting over his mouth like mischief and invitation, and emboldened by a new sense of freedom, the stress of the last hour, and the drink she has already had, Hermione bites her lips and nods.

"All right."

* * *

><p>Malfoy is a quiet drunk, and so is she. Two sheets to the wind – no, four, at <em>least<em> she decides in a hazed attempt at drunken pedantry. She giggles, madly, hysterically, lying on the bed with a glass of firewhiskey and feeling as blitzed as she has ever been. They don't talk. But he lies on the bed beside her – close enough that she could reach out and trace the straight line of his nose if she wanted, which she doesn't – and it is companionable. There is a strange pleasantness to this sea of emotion churning through her. Sadness and grief and anger and a hazy, mellow absence of caring. Hermione revels in it as she stares up at the canopy of the bed. She charmed it to look like a Muggle visualisation before she got too drunk. It is colour-changing swirls and whirls, mesmerising and hypnotic, and she feels like she is swelling and expanding and contracting again with the image.

"Will I ever get home?" she asks softly, the question coming up from nowhere. She sinks her teeth into her lower lip immediately after it escapes, and then lifts her head enough to take a wobbly sip of firewhiskey. "Shit."

Malfoy is silent for a long moment. Then he rolls his head to the side, to face her, and she follows suit, blinking at him owlishly. His eyes glow silver-purple in the glow of the charmed visualiser, and his tongue is dark purple-pink when he wets his lips before he speaks. "Yes. I promise."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," she tells him, feeling tears try to come crawling up again, and inside her head she swears at herself furiously and blames the alcohol. "Truly, Malfoy. Don't. Please."

He is silent for another few moments that seem to stretch out forever, and Hermione watches the thoughts cross over his face, fleeting and highlighted by the changing colours. "You'll either get home, or we'll both be dead."

A beat.

"Oh." That is…acceptable, to Hermione. She nods and looks back up at the ebbing and pulsing of the image above them, gnawing on her lip and thinking. "What – what about you, Malfoy. Will you ever get home?"

"I don't have a home, Granger." It should sound trite, but it just sounds horribly sad.

"You – you could come with me," she offers stupidly, lilting, hopeful tone like a child's, and he makes a soft noise that could be a huff of laughter, bitter, but not aimed to hurt her, and it doesn't. It just makes her sadder. She stares at him in profile, all lit up green now. _Slytherin_. His face is sharp and sad, and there is a set to his jaw – a bunching of the muscles there, a measured swallow – that speaks of a grim determination that Hermione has seen in Harry and Ron. That they claim to have seen in her. A sense of duty in the face of unspeakable awfulness. He shuts his eyes for the count of ten, because she counts in her drunken fuddle – and when he opens them again he still doesn't look at her.

"If I can retain my position, I have to stay. I am –" Malfoy's voice breaks slightly and his cheeks darken, he clears his throat and takes a sip of firewhiskey from the bottle he has claimed his. She doesn't know how he is still _conscious_ with the amount he has drunk, and Hermione suspects that perhaps he spent a great deal of his time drinking before her arrival in his life. That would explain the longing looks at the liquor cabinet, at least, and his considerable tolerance to it.

He tries again: "– I am too valuable a source of information for the Order to lose, with Severus dead. With what I can give the Order, they are able to make strikes that damage my master's efforts greatly. Infrequent, yes, because otherwise he would know there was a rat, and soon discover it was me, but still. I am an…asset to your precious _Potter._" The venom in Malfoy's voice is overwhelming; all resigned, hateful bitterness, and Hermione finds herself wanting to recoil from it. She doesn't.

"It's wrong, that you have to do this," she says instead very quietly, stating the obvious – oh _marvellous_, Hermione, she thinks sarcastically in a daze of liquor, her eyes darting from Malfoy's mouth to his eyes and back again. His throat clicks dryly as he swallows, and his voice is thick.

"Yeah," he says.

"I – I don't blame you. I did, but –"

"I _know_ you did."

She frowns at his interruption. "I did, but I don't anymore."

Malfoy attempts a smile, or at least she thinks he does, because he fails miserably. "I'm…that's good. I'm..."

"You're what?"

"I'm really not a monster, you know. I have to – have to do monstrous things, but I'm not a – not really. Or that's what I tell myself. Maybe I'm just lying to make myself feel better." He props himself up on one elbow, staring into her eyes with an intensity that only the very, very drunk can achieve. Hermione feels as though he is looking for absolution in her face, and she doesn't know if she has the right to give that to him. "Am I a monster, Granger? Do you really not blame me? You – you'd have every right to blame me. To hate me. Would you? I suppose…after what I did…" Malfoy is rambling and lost in his head, eyes glazing over as Hermione pushes herself up on an elbow too, gulping down the last of her firewhiskey for courage and feeling her stomach gurgle and lurch in protest.

She drops her glass to the bed between them, and reaches out, bridging the gap.

Hermione lays her hand along Malfoy's cheek, conforming it to the shape of him, and his eyes lift to hers startled and glazed-intent, like he is trying to find her through a sea of fog. She sways in toward him unintentionally as he shifts on the bed and the landscape changes beneath her. A startled gasp and she is drunken and her reflexes are slow, and her nose is bumping against his before she can stop herself. She chokes a giggle, but his breath stutters in and his hand comes up to push gentle into the tangles of her hair, as if to push her back and steady her. And then there is electricity in the air, and her lungs suddenly feeling squeezed to nothing, her breath catching in her chest. His fingers curl deliberately and slowly, and his fingertips scrape light at the base of her skull.

_What._

_What?_ Hermione thinks in a stunned-frozen sort of way, trying and failing to process what is happening. And there is a _moment_, before she pushes back a little. A handful of heartbeats, where their eyes lock until she goes cross-eyed, and all wobbly in her stomach from the drink. The _firewhiskey_. She shoves a few inches away, using the front of his shoulder for leverage, her fingers holding tight to the heat of him, his bare skin and the jut and hard lines of skin and muscle-swathed bone. Her thumb grazes the base of his throat, and his hand is in her _hair._ Tentative and light, ready to pull away at the slightest sign from her it seems, because his eyes are cautious on hers through the drunkenness, and his muscles taut. She is glad of that caution, but she doesn't give him a sign.

"You're not a monster, Malfoy. I promise," she tells him instead, while his fingers start soothing through her hair and she lets him, because why not, if he wants to? She is too drunk to care about things like that, any more than _'ooh, it feels so nice, mm, just like that,'_ which she definitely doesn't say, because things are already weird enough. She feels like they probably shouldn't be doing this, but it feels so _nice. _Their noses nearly bump again as his drunken fingers give a too-enthusiastic scritch and push her head forward, and she grins, and they are both lit green-blue in the light of the visualiser, and he grins back lopsided and achingly earnest. Her eyes linger on his mouth as his grin fades, his fingers moving rhythmically and his mouth relaxing into a shape that…that is almost a pout but not quite…and…

And.

And.

And then she throws up on the bed between them.

* * *

><p><em>Leave a review to feed the muse :)<em>


	6. Part Six

**Edit:** As of the **28th of April 2015**, I have made major changes to this fic, thanks to constructive criticism by a reader. Scenes have been added, and the tone and content of many existing scenes have been altered or expanded upon. I hope that such alterations give a better picture of the dynamic between Draco and Hermione, which previously was not illustrated in a great deal of detail because I was trying to keep this fic short. However, the subject material does not lend itself to brevity, it seems - and in order to make a proper go of achieving what I set out to achieve, I have had to make some changes. I _recommend_ skimming back through the fic from the beginning before reading on, but doing so is not _necessary_. I hope you find the changes I've made to be positive ones!

Liss xx

* * *

><p><span><strong>Part Six<strong>

A vanishing charm makes short work of Hermione's vomit, but can't repair the shattered moment that had been building between them. Malfoy's mood turns to snorting laughter and concern for Hermione all muddled together, too drunk for awkwardness at what they had nearly done. Hermione doesn't feel as drunk now though, and with the sour taste of vomit sharp in her mouth she regains enough sense to be horrified by what they nearly did. Fear thrums in her like a pulse as she vanishes the vomit – she should not have…they should not have…Merlin, how could she have? How could she have felt like it was all right to do that? To touch Malfoy that way, after everything that had happened between them?

And worst of all, _why had she wanted to?_

Hermione's hands tremble as she slides off the freshly cleaned bed, careful not to jostle Malfoy, laying his wand on the bedside table with a clumsy clatter. She still feels drunk, and stupid with it, but so much clearer than she did a moment ago. Malfoy stares at her with unguarded curiosity, sinking to his side on the bed and wincing at the pain. "Granger?" She covers her mouth with her hand and breathes, feeling filthy and wrong and perverted. How is it that she could look at Malfoy and want him? How can she see him that way after…after…? He - he has been kind to her, yes, but to _want_ him? Like _that?_ What is wrong with her?

"Granger, you with me?" He sounds worried and his tone gets sharp, and Hermione pauses in her unconscious backward shuffle and shoots him a wide-eyed look. Panic scratches beneath the surface of her mind like claws. "Granger, are you okay?"

"Don't touch me," Hermione says on a gasp, shaking and breathless, and Malfoy's brow furrows in confusion. Her hand slips to the base of her throat, her short fingernails dig hard into the flesh over her collarbone, the sharp points of pain a relief. "Don't _ever_ touch me like that," she tells him in a sharp quaver, her chest tight and heart pounding too fast against her ribs. "_Never again_, un-unless we have to because of – because of _Him_." Hurt blooms dark in Malfoy's eyes, and his mouth twitches, hardens, and then his features smooth to something as close to neutrality as he can probably manage, drunk and injured.

"Granger, Granger, I didn't…it was _you_," he says cautious and bewildered from the bed, nearly apologetic, and Hermione huffs a tearful breath because he's _right_ damn him, and she feels like an _idiot_. "But I won't," he goes on, lying on his side in trousers and bandaging, pushing himself back up with an elbow and a stifled whimper, his eyes fixed to her as he speaks. The steady care in those grey eyes makes Hermione feel warm and safe despite herself, and _that_ makes her feel sick to her stomach. He picks his words carefully, only sounding faintly drunk. "I won't ever touch you like that without your permission when we're alone. I swear, Granger. Do you understand? _You're _in control in here, when it's just us, not me, okay? You know that, don't you?"

Hermione stares at Malfoy mistrustfully for a long moment, searching his face for any hint of a lie, and finding none. Some of the sick tension in her stomach unknots as she nods slowly. "What about when it's not just us?" Her voice is little more than a whisper. Malfoy sinks slowly back to the bed, on his side so that his wounded back doesn't press to the blankets, his face stark and bleak.

"Then neither of us is in control."

* * *

><p>All Hermione wants to do after that is curl up in her armchair and try to seek some dreamless peace for a few hours, but in the end she doesn't sleep at all, because Malfoy can't. As the hours stretch on and he begins to sober up more, the pain from the flogging settles in deep and the numbing charms are not enough to keep it at bay. His back is ribbons of flesh beneath the bandages after all. Of course it hurts. The agony must be all but unbearable, and yet Malfoy bears it nearly silently, with bitten lips and pillow-muffled whimpers. The alcohol haze wears off much too fast for both of them, and Hermione finds herself sober and exhausted as dawn creeps ever nearer, her head throbbing and groggy and swirling with thoughts she doesn't want to think.<p>

The hours drag and Malfoy suffers, and Hermione tries to help, with numbing charms and cool cloths, and soothing words when he becomes nearly incoherent with the pain and his exhaustion. And it's awful to feel this way when it's at Malfoy's expense, but Hermione has to admit it feels good to be useful. It feels like taking back a part of herself to be able to do something, to have a purpose even if she can't actually help him that much. She feels more like herself than she has in weeks, despite her unease over what had nearly happened between her and Malfoy. Hermione tells herself that it's the fact that Malfoy is the only thing keeping her from a slow death by torture that makes her feel like this – just gratitude and proximity and fear. Nothing else.

The next day arrives as Hermione reassures a feverish, pained Malfoy that everything is going to be okay in tired murmurs, and sponges his face and torso and arms. And she tells herself that isn't needy gratitude and affection in his pain-dazed eyes, tells herself that the way he looks at her doesn't create an uncomfortable tingling sense of warmth in her stomach. She's imagining it. Food and drink are brought at intervals by a house elf who won't stay and speak to Hermione, as she tends Malfoy through the long hours of the day. There's no one else to do it, and she likes to be _useful_. She helps him sit up and firmly coaxes him into eating the soup, makes him drink plenty of hot tea, helps him hobble to the bathroom, and changes the bandages when they start weeping through to the sheets. Malfoy thanks her for these things in a croaking whisper, pain crinkling his face, and she does all she can for him; happily, losing her fear for herself somewhere inside her worry for him.

When the dawn of the third day of this constant care finally blushes through the cracks in the curtains, Hermione is sitting curled up in the armchair she's claimed for her own, eyes bleary and head muzzy. She's sticky with sweat, and her hair is limp and damp, half falling out of a messy plait secured by a cotton tie that she scavenged from a pair of Malfoy's pyjama trousers the other day. Malfoy has recently slipped into the restless doze he spends most of his time in, but Hermione is afraid to let herself sleep, needing to be as alert as possible. Too scared to let her heavy eyes close in case he needs her, or a Death Eater tries to get in. She falls asleep anyway, nodding off with the morning sun warm on her legs, to the rasping sound of Malfoy's breathing.

There is a rug heavy and warm over Hermione when she jerks out of a morass of uneasy dreams that border on nightmares, her heart pounding. She throws the rug back and looks around sharply for Malfoy – the bed is empty, blankets rumpled, and she scrambles up with a lance of fear. Where…? Was he taken? Has he–? Her mind races with half-formed thoughts of dread.

"Malfoy?"

"You're awake." Malfoy's voice is hoarse but welcome to Hermione's ears, and her eyes follow the sound of his voice and fall on him. He sits at his desk looking over his shoulder at her. Shirtless in the streaks of morning light coming through the gaps in the curtains, the bandages that wind around his torso blooming dark brownish-red and pale yellow in places where the blood and weeping fluids have seeped right through the layers of gauze. There are dark bruised hollows under Malfoy's eyes, and his complexion is ashen; he looks dreadful, his state highlighted by the beam of morning sun cutting over him.

"You should be in bed," Hermione says as she picks up the crocheted rug that Malfoy must have covered her with, and drapes it neatly over the back of the armchair. She pushes a messy fall of hair off her face, and knuckles at her eyes, speaking through a yawn. "You still need to rest."

"I know. Believe me, Granger, I know. But I didn't expect to get that luxury for long – and as expected, I haven't." Malfoy dips his quill into an inkpot and resumes his scratchings over the parchment. There is none of the vulnerability she had seen over the past few days visible in him now; he is cold and hard, all bleak determination. His wounded shoulders are hunched, like a barricade against the world, and she can see pain in the way he's keeping very still. Hermione twists her hands together uncertainly and shuffles nearer to him, dread growing inside her, dark and slimy.

"Why?" Hermione almost doesn't want to know. Malfoy's mouth thins as he looks up at her, standing at the corner of his desk nervously.

"He's – he's ordered me to bring you to dinner tonight," he says with his face forced into careful blankness, and slides a piece of parchment over the desk to her, his fingers shaking a little. Hermione is suddenly shaking too now, breaking out into a sweat, frozen and heavy with sick terror. She plucks up the parchment numbly, unfolding it as he goes on. "Not a revel – thank Merlin for small mercies. It's a formal dinner to show off to some Dark Wizards from the Americas, whom the Dark Lord is…wooing. He'll acquire either their loyalty, or their heads," Draco finishes, hissing through his teeth with discomfort as he shifts in his seat, meeting Hermione's horrified gaze briefly, before she lowers it to scan the creased parchment.

_Malfoy,_

_You shall attend dinner tonight, at the Dark Lord's request. Bring the Mudblood slave in the garments you were sent for it; the Dark Lord's guests wish to see it displayed, and he wishes to see a demonstration of your renewed obedience. Dinner will be at 8pm._

_R Lestrange_

The parchment crumples in Hermione's hand as she gasps for breath that suddenly won't come. The crumpled paper falls from her hand, and she takes a staggering step back, choking on the words she'd read. It was to be expected – she couldn't have expected to stay safely hidden, especially after Voldemort had _flogged_ Malfoy for keeping her away, but she had _hoped_. She had hoped despite all good sense that this wouldn't happen. She couldn't…she just couldn't…

"He wants you in attendance to –"

"I read it. I read… I – _shit_." Hermione backs further away, wrenching desperately for breath, chest caught in a vice and lungs screaming for air. Despite her whooping gasps she can't seem to breathe, and dizzy panic seizes her as she clutches at the corner of Malfoy's desk for balance. The room is spinning and swaying and spots dance in front of her eyes, and she knows without a doubt she's about to faint. It seems so stupid, she thinks dazedly; collapsing into graceless heap on the floor, how embarrassing. Her fingers dig into the desk and she makes an inarticulate sound, and there is movement and hands grab her upper arms, steadying and grounding her.

"_Granger_. Granger, _breathe_. Slow and steady. Okay?" She blinks up at Malfoy, hovering over her as he steadies her firmly, his expression concerned and pained. "In," – he breathes in very slowly – "And out," – he lets the breath out on a whoosh that gusts warm over Hermione's forehead and suffuses her with the scent of toothpaste and sweet tea. "In," – and this time she tries to breath with Malfoy – "And out," he says very softly, his thumb brushing a lock of hair back from her temple, his face gentle. Hermione shuts her eyes and her hands come up fast and shaky, curling her fingers tightly around his forearms by his elbows, and for long minutes they just hold onto each other and _breathe._

_Bring the Mudblood slave – Mudblood slave, Mudblood slave – in the garments you were sent for it. It. It. _She is an 'it' now, Hermione thinks as the words thud in her head like a perverted pulse. _Mudblood slave – it – displayed – _she thinks over and over and over like a death sentence as she clings to Malfoy, his breath sweet on her face and his hands firm and careful on her upper arms, fingers brand-hot against her clammy skin.

* * *

><p>It takes her only a few minutes to wrench herself out of her seething panic, and back from Malfoy's touch. She bites down on the instinctive urge to lash out and say, <em>don't touch me! I told you not to touch me!<em> Because it wasn't his fault. He was only stopping her from falling. It's not his fault she feels like this, she tells herself, and it helps just the smallest bit.

"You need your bandages changed," she says abruptly instead of lashing out in frightened panic, and he silently conveys confusion at the whiplash switch in topic. His tone when he finally speaks is just as bewildered as his expression.

"Granger, I think we need to talk about th–"

"It helps to focus on something else," she tells him sharp and embarrassed as she straightens her clothing and smoothes her hair, avoiding Malfoy's eyes. "I just…need a moment, all right? Just give me a goddamn _moment_." The last comes out in a snarl. He snaps his mouth shut on whatever protests he had been going to make, and reaches across to his desk, silently scooping up his wand and handing it to her without a word. No nagging or sympathy, just doing as she needs. It's strange, Hermione thinks still dizzy from her panic attack, how they are starting to fall into an awkward kind of harmony; of knowing just how far to push, and when to be there silently supportive, and when to retreat, and when to give and take, and…_Merlin_, it seems so unlikely but they actually get along well, considering the situation.

So Hermione takes the wand. Takes it and directs Malfoy silently to sit down on the bed, and with supplies in hand folds herself up behind him on her knees, fingers working at his bandage fastenings nimbly. She changes his bandages with sure, efficient movements that speak of too much practice. His skin is scabbing and wounded under her gentle fingers, little moans of pain bursting stifled from his lips as she carefully soaks and peels the bandages away. When she has finally finished unwinding his torso, she places her hand on the ball of his shoulder and squeezes softly, automatic and easy. "All done unwrapping," she says lightly, surveying the damage and internally flinching from the gruesome brutality of it. His back will never be the same again without extensive treatment from professional specialist Healers; the once smooth, pale expanse of skin is now terribly marred. A quilt of ugly scabbing is developing over the deep, vivid weals that had gone down to the spare fat and muscle beneath his flesh. She wonders whether Malfoy cares about the massive amount of scarring. _She_ would care, but Malfoy hasn't mentioned the aesthetic damage, hasn't asked once how it looks.

"How's it healing? Any – any infection?" he asks her instead, rough and breathless as he deals with the pain, head dropping forward, and Hermione sees his hands clench hard at the sheets at the edge of the bed. The tension ripples up him; his bare arms flexing with wiry muscle beneath the surface, shoulders shifting and hunching, provoking a sharp, inarticulate sound of pain from him.

"Careful," she says, hand sliding off his tensed shoulder, a touch that is nearly a caress. She frowns at the scabbing wounds that lace down Malfoy's back, sinking gratefully into the cool sense of distance and disassociation that playing Healer grants her. Hermione sees no angry hints of red, inflamed skin, no discoloured pus, or swelling. She dances her fingers down Malfoy's sides as she examines him, leaving a trail of goosebumps in the wake of her touch. He shivers and seems to press needily back into the brush of her fingertips, seeking a firmer and less-ticklish touch, perhaps. She pulls her hands back from him, fingertips tingling pleasantly.

"Granger?"

"It's healing," Hermione tells him helplessly, shrugging and wishing that there was more she could do for him than keeping the wounds clean and covered. "No sign of infection, so far, and it's all scabbing over well. It'll take some time before they stop causing you pain though, I'm afraid. I'll have to keep using numbing charms, but the bandages likely will be able to come off soon. We need to let the wounds breathe eventually." Hermione skims a finger feather-light down a thick ridge of heavy scabbing, and Malfoy doesn't even seem to feel it. She can relate; she can't seem to feel anything either. She sits silent behind Malfoy, waiting uncertain and purposeless, her hands feeling empty, refusing to let herself dwell on the horror that looms ahead of her.

She stares down at her hands in her lap, folded limply together.

"Tomorrow," Malfoy says, and her eyes snap up to meet his with a feeling of relief. He's looking over his shoulder, expression unreadable. "We can think about that tomorrow." Gratitude swells warm inside her chest as Hermione slowly winds clean bandages back around Malfoy's torso. Her hands are extra-cautious and gentle, and his chest rises and falls evenly with his every slow breath.

* * *

><p>The scarlet box sits on the table, elegant and evil, and Hermione can't tear her eyes from it. She feels <em>sick<em>. Malfoy sits across the table from her, swathed in his fresh bandaging, buttoning up a crisp, pale grey shirt. He's staring at the box too, face bleak and hard. It's seven pm and they can't leave this conversation any longer; dinner is ticking ever closer, and with each second that passes it feels like the invisible weight on Hermione's chest grows heavier. Her palms are clammy with nervous sweat, as are her underarms, and the back of her neck. She wants to drown under the cool cleanse of water, drifting into blackness and nothing more. But instead all she has is sick heat.

"Granger," Malfoy begins reluctantly, just as Hermione speaks.

"_Idon'twantto_," she blurts out in a whispered rush, wringing her hands together in her lap as her gaze stays glued to the box. "Malfoy. Malfoy, I _can't_," she begs miserably. Save a twitch at his lips, Malfoy appears unmoved by her refusal, merely accepting it with a calm nod. He does up the second to last button on his shirt, leaving the collar open, and then locks eyes with her.

"I won't force you to do anything, Granger. But you have to realise, the Dark Lord _will_. If we don't go down to dinner as ordered, we will be dragged down, and we will be punished." He is white as a sheet, but doesn't cringe from the words. He was flogged because of her, Hermione thinks as Malfoy fiddles with the cuffs of his shirt. He was flayed open to protect her, because she wouldn't do as Voldemort ordered. And if they disobey again, both of them will suffer. And it seems pointless and useless and masochistic (and terrifying,) and Hermione looks at Malfoy and knows he cannot cope with any more punishment. _Merlin_, she can't, she thinks as she struggles for air, feeling stifled and suffocated, pressed in upon.

"There's not really much choice is there?" she says aloud, in a very small voice, and Malfoy sighs and shakes his head, defeated.

"No."

They stare at each other grimly across the table, and then Hermione reaches out and takes the lid off the scarlet box.

* * *

><p>It is dim in the cavernous dining hall, the long table lit by flickering candles set at intervals down the centre runner. The seats around the ornate table are nearly all filled by a variety of witches and wizards, the only commonality between them the aura of malice and cruelty that radiates from every single one. And at the very end of the table, a lipless smile twisting his inhuman face, sits Voldemort. Hermione shudders and flinches at the sight of him, terror wrenching through her like a physical force.<p>

The Dark Lord inclines his head as Malfoy steps across the threshold, well-tailored black dress robes showing just the collar and cuffs of his pale grey silk shirt, and the bottom half-inch of his charcoal-grey trousers. Malfoy has looked cold and blank, since they left his suite; pale grey eyes flat and unreadable, mouth a neutral full-lipped line that contrasts with the sharp angles of his face and his high brow, platinum blond hair swept back with not a lock out of place. He is undeniably handsome, Hermione thinks, but now in front of Voldemort, his handsomeness is in the same manner that a statue is – the vivid sense of the artist's _feeling_ istrapped forever inside cold, inert stone, only coming to life in the viewer's imagination. Hermione's imagination only leads her to dark places, now, as it tries to now, staring up at Malfoy's cold expression.

He looks like a stranger. Like a Death Eater.

But she knows what he is like, really. She _knows_ and she clings to that truth as she tries not to drown in the lie he has smoothed over his face now. Hermione _knows_.

* * *

><p><em><span>Earlier<span>_

_She steps out of the bathroom feeling more naked than if she __were__ naked, barely resisting the urge to cover herself with her hands. What is the point? Malfoy has seen all of her already, __had__ all of her. He tore her open and although he refuses to admit it – to salve his conscience in denial – there is no way she can be put back together the same way again. He has tried to pretend that they can play at some kind of normality, but Hermione has always known better. There is no reason to hide herself. He has seen everything._

_The bathroom door finally swings to a close behind her, and Malfoy's head snaps up at the click, and he sees her there. She is dressed in the slave's finery that Voldemort gifted Malfoy to dress her in, with her hair tamed to tumble in curls over her shoulders, and her face painted as she would never bother to do so herself, with reddened lips and dark-smudged eyes and eyelashes long and curling with mascara. Hermione feels like what Voldemort would have her be; a prettied up doll, to be __used__ by those who own her._

"_Well?" Hermione means to be sharp and harsh, defiant, but instead it comes out in a cracked whisper, and her cheeks blaze hot. Malfoy is staring at her. Staring with wide grey eyes as he stands jerkily at the table, his hands flexing at his sides, __staring__ at her as though he cannot look away for all that he seems to want to hide his eyes, his cheeks staining just as red as hers feel._

"_You lo–" he begins and then breaks off, slamming his lips tightly together and drawing in a long breath, nostrils flaring. Hermione thinks she knows what he was going to blurt out, and it makes her skin feel too tight and a strange muddle of fury and warmth churn in her stomach until she thinks she will vomit. She is glad he caught himself. Malfoy swallows hard, finally tearing his gaze from her and staring fixed at the floor, hands jittering to adjust the front of his robes. Hermione shivers in her skin. This is so wrong. It is defilement of both of them, and everything in her __rages__ and protests at that, even as it __works__, making her feel dirtied and used._

_She moves toward the bed with awkward, faltering steps, the peach-coloured g-string silk knickers she wears making walking feel uncomfortable and strange – she has always hated that style of underwear and longs to tear them off – and the unlaced under bust corset shifting and rubbing at her pelvic bones. She looks over to Malfoy and he is silent, eyes on the floor and fists clenched so hard that she can see his knuckles are white as she reaches out and takes hold of a bedpost._

"_Malfoy?"_

_His head jerks up, and Hermione watches him over her shoulder as his lips fall apart and his breath sucks in at the sight of her there – gripping the bedpost with legs apart, only in a g-string and that unlaced corset, waiting for him. There is shame and __want__ in Malfoy's eyes, and Hermione feels she should recoil from that want but there is something fizzing in her stomach in response to his reaction to her that she can't deny, stripped naked of dignity and pretence as she is. It makes her feel dirty, but she responds to his lust anyway, on an instinctual, needy level that makes her feel just as ashamed as he clearly does. They shouldn't be ashamed – Hermione knows this. _

_There is nothing wrong in wanting Malfoy, nothing wrong in him wanting her. That is biology, that is unavoidable, natural. There should be no shame in feelings, only actions. Wanting each other, Hermione thinks dazedly as her fingers tighten on the bedpost and their gazes brush together like a caress that sends electricity down her spine, is a result of their situation. The way it is tangling and binding them up emotionally, in a way that sometimes seems inextricable, that sometimes she thinks she should resist and spurn and sometimes just wants to __embrace__. She licks her lips, and looks away._

"_Will you lace me?"_

_Malfoy's hands shake as he draws the laces of her corset tight with firm yanks that slam the air from her lungs. Hermione clings to the bedpost, a raw, abused nerve, that he is flaying open – unwilling, unintentional, but still._

"_It's too tight, Granger," he protests shakily, __worried__, and she shakes her head, knowing it should be tighter, and wanting on a whim – perversely – to punish him. And if Hermione can use this to do so, then she will._

"_Harder," she tells him in a whisper, and Malfoy complies with a wobbling huff of breath that whispers warm on her neck and shoulders, and he stands so close at times that she can feel the heat radiating off his body, his fingers fumbling against her skin and the corset. She shivers under his touch and he stills._

"_Are you all right?"_

"…_no," she says, a breathless sound that is more whimper than answer. "No." And then Hermione turns, corset laces dangling, and presses her back to the bedpost. Malfoy's eyes are wide grey and brimming with so much feeling that she could cry, that it is impossible to hate him even if she wanted to, that it is too easy to want this despite how unwise her mind says it is. She reaches her hands up to cup Malfoy's face as he stands there still, eyes fixed unblinking to hers, the faint rasp of stubble tickling her palms and her fingers. And then Hermione draws Malfoy's face down to hers – he moves with her easily – and she presses her lips gently to his, her heart shaking and straining in her chest like it will burst. Malfoy's lips are warm and dry and soft as flower petals, and as she pushes against them with her own red-painted lips, they part on a needy groan as though something has broken utterly in him. _

"_Mmph," Malfoy says inarticulately as he bends into the kiss and deepens it, and his right hand comes up to grasp her waist hard, his left tangling in her hair as his lips catch her lower one between them, sucking, nibbling, __tormenting__. A dart of electric-hot arousal darts through Hermione's abdomen and sends hard pulses of need quaking through her, and she makes her own inarticulate, muffled sound into his mouth, her fingers sliding down from his face to curl desperately into the rough silk of his shirt at the shoulders. She is breathless and dizzy, head spinning, and she doesn't know if it is because of the corset, or because of his kiss. She moves her mouth searchingly against Malfoy's, experimenting hedonistically, insistently. Her lips push and press against his, and he makes needy little huffs of noise into her mouth, and their tongues graze and seek delicately and then sloppy-urgent and titillating, and it is so __strange__ that something so odd can feel so desperately, urgently __good__._

"…_oh__," Hermione says with gasping wonder as they pull apart for a second, her bones melting under her skin and her clitoris aching and throbbing for the touch of his fingers, and then: "…oh…ngggh – __mmph__," when Malfoy claims her mouth again. He is vibrating with tension under her hands, pressing her into the bedpost and __ravishing__ her, mouth plundering hers thoroughly as she moans and quakes and arches up against him, his arm hooked fully around her waist now, pinning her close but she wants to be closer. She wants to strip naked and crawl inside his skin. She feels him hard against her and it makes her want to push her hips out and grind herself against the length of him, to make him groan again like he had before, as though she had snapped all his strings, to turn his uneven drags for air even wilder, harsher, to make him kiss her all over and rut against her. _

_Hermione wants to make Malfoy lose all semblance of control, and lose her own along with him. She thinks she may have achieved the latter already._

_Her breasts are crushed between them, pushed up by the corset but not contained, naked, bare, her nipples hard as they rub against the rough silk of his shirt. She thinks with a heady, thoughtless lust, that she needs his mouth over them. Hot, wet sucking and licking at her nipples as his hands cup around the weight of her breasts, his thumb teasing over whichever nipple he isn't laving with his tongue. Merlin, she __wants__ that. Hermione hooks her leg around Malfoy's hips, and thrusts shamelessly out against the hard bulge of his dick through his trousers, her face turning up to his like a flower to the sun, her tongue sliding over his and thrills wracking and wrecking her completely as she clutches to him._

_She embraces this madness for what it is, and wants __everything__._

_And then three things happen at once; Hermione attempts to push Malfoy's head down to her breasts with urgent need and no finesse or grace, an insistent sound chimes repeatedly from Malfoy's wand, and Malfoy stumbles back from her with an odd look crumpling his face. His eyes are shining and his pupils are blown wide, his lips dampened and kiss-swollen, reddened by her lipstick and the rush of blood. He blinks dazedly, and horror takes his eyes as the lust begins to retreat from his mind._

"_I shouldn't have – shit – that's…my alarm – we need to go. Granger, I…"_

"_Malfoy, I–"_

"_I shouldn't have done that," he says again, firmer this time. "And we need to go." His face loses its flush as he says this, and the dazed, heady lust leaches from his features, leaving him cold and hard and __drained__._

"_But – but I wanted to," she protests, voice small as her own arousal is slapped down by the coldness on Malfoy's face and reality sets in, but she is still certain. Because it's the truth. "I wanted to. I w-want…""But she can't say it now, with the moment gone and Malfoy looking at her like that, and the things she wears and the ordeal that awaits her. She chokes back a sob, stuffing her fist against her mouth and biting at her knuckles for the distraction of pain._

"_You can't know what you want. You can't – this – I'm all you have and I __want__ y– I want…__fuck__." Malfoy's face clouds with anger, crumples and twists with a rage that Hermione can see as clear as day is directed at himself, and not her. She shrinks from it anyway. He takes a stumbling step back from her, fists clenching, and he looks like he wants to hit something. "Of course you – because I'm protecting you and – and we're stuck together – and... __We are not in a situation where this is okay__," he grates out at last, raking his fingers rough through his hair and turning to pacing shortly in front of her, back and forth with jerky, furious steps. "I __own__ you, whether I like it or fucking not, and if we, if I…then I'm taking __advantage__ of you, Granger. He forced me to…do __that__, and he might again, he might __tonight__ for all we know, and – __fuck__. I'm not going to bloody well do it to you of my own accord too. Not even if you think you want it. Right now, you don't have the freedom to say __no__ to me, so how the fuck can I trust that you really mean __yes__?"_

_Hermione stares at him, half-frightened, feeling like a child compared to him, feeling stupid and lost and like she wants to say 'no, that's not it at all!' but she doesn't __know__ that does she? and when she opens her mouth, what comes out without thought – horrifyingly – is: "But, well, if we're already…you know, then it wouldn't…be…rape. Would it."_

_From the look of him – the way his already pale face blanches utterly ashen-grey, and he just __stares__ at her – Hermione suspects she has babbled something terrible._

"_That's __why__? That's…?" he stumbles out, devastated and horrified and hurt, looking at her as though he is begging her to take the words back even as he knows they __can't__ be._

"_No!__ No, I just…I don't know why I said that. I didn't mean it!" Hermione rushes out even though she does know why in retrospect – because she thought it would convince him it was okay, that they __should__, and god wasn't she incredibly, unbelievably wrong? "Malfoy, please?" It's like a knife twisting in her belly as the words come out and he stares at her with that horrified hurt, and she realises absently how sick this would look to an outsider. She is begging the man who was made to rape her to have sex with her, despite his own protests that it would be wrong, and she must look so utterly pathetic and __fucked up__. She can't even accept his rejection with dignity. What is wrong with her? What–? _

_Hermione snaps her mouth shut and curses her lack of poker face as Malfoy's eyes cast over her expression and dull with comprehension, seeing the shame in her eyes and not quite interpreting right. He sees regret and shame for what she did, but she __doesn't__ regret kissing him, just everything that has come after._

"_I'm sorry," Malfoy says before she can even think how to explain, lost and helpless as he looks for some kind of absolution in her face that he refuses to realise he doesn't __need__, that if this current awkward moment is anyone's fault it is hers, or Voldemort's, but in this case, not Malfoy's. "I'm so fucking sorry."_

"_I'm not." Hermione lifts her chin, forcing herself to stare him down unwaveringly. It's harder than she thought. "Nothing else about any of this horrible, messed up situation is __okay__ – so why should this be?"_

"_...what?" He furrows his brow; confused, blank._

"_Why would you expect this – __this__ to work normally when everything else is mad and awful and __hell__?" she demands of Malfoy furiously, frustration thrumming in her chest and he gives her a sad smile that makes her want to kick and scream and claw at him until she collapses of exhaustion._

"_You don't deserve any of this, Granger," he says to her very gently, and then crosses the distance between them with two quick steps to her, cupping her face in his large, thin, warm hands. His bones press to hers and her eyes flutter shut, and then a breath she didn't know she was holding gusts softly out of her as his lips press to her forehead. It is a benediction, an apology, a comfort – so much more than mere lust, and for just a moment Hermione relaxes and forgets, as Malfoy's words wash over her, soothing and calm. "You deserve so much better than this."_

_And then he shifts away, and there is only silence hanging still and heavy between them as they ready themselves for whatever awaits them downstairs._

* * *

><p>And Hermione thinks that it doesn't matter what any of them might deserve. Because that isn't the way the world works.<p>

* * *

><p>"My Lord," Malfoy says humbly, with a deep and elegant bow that shows none of the pain and stiffness Hermione knows he feels in his wounded back. The Dark Lord doesn't reply immediately – first his eyes slide down to rest voracious on Hermione, his lipless smile blossoming to a grin that exposes more of his cavernous, ugly mouth. His tongue flickers mockingly out, as though he is titillated, as though he is tasting her fear, as though he is enjoying the sight of her like <em>this.<em> Hermione has no doubt he feels all three. She looks down at the floor, her cheeks blazing red with humiliation and her skin clammy with fear-sweat as she tries to shrink behind Malfoy, seeking a pathetic illusion of safety.

"My dear Draco," Voldemort croons with affection then, all false-faced and cruel. "We are glad to see you are feeling well enough to grace us with your presence, aren't we, Nagini?" The snake slithers up out of the shadows beside Voldemort's chair, coiling around it, its head resting on Voldemort's shoulder as it hisses. Hermione's knees hurt, grinding into the hard floor, abraded and bruising from the abuse they have suffered on the long crawl from Malfoy's suite. "I am relieved that you have seen the folly of your earlier…selfishness, and disobedience, and that another punishment shall not be necessary. I know you want to keep the whore to yourself, Draco, but it isn't polite not to _share_."

Hermione's blood runs cold as the words echo and rebound in her head. _Share. Shareshare__share __ohdearMerlineplease__no__. _She shuts her eyes, unwilling – unable – to look at the people who it seems she may be _shared_ with. She clings to the shred of stupid hope that when Voldemort speaks of sharing, he means at a revel and not _tonight_, but she knows full well it is a foolish hope. Malfoy swallows hard. "Of course, my Lord – what is mine is yours to do with as you wish, just as I am yours to command as you wish." His voice is perfectly even as he goes on, and the sincerity in his tone and manner would fool even Hermione: "Thank you for punishing me. Thank you for forgiving me." The gratitude in Malfoy's voice is sickening, _horrifying_, even despite that Hermione knows it is just an excellent sham. "I am not worthy to serve you, my Lord." He bows his head again, a study in humble devotion.

"Ah, but there is hope you may become worthy yet, Draco," Voldemort says, and Hermione cracks her eyes open just enough to see he is still smiling, but now Hermione thinks he means the expression to be gentle and reassuring. It isn't. "You have certainly been treating your slave as befits a Death Eater, if her _obedience_ is any indication. It seems as though you have broken her quite well."

"She is proving to be most satisfactory, my Lord. And it has been a pleasure to teach her that she belongs to me, body and soul," Malfoy says with the terrifying sincerity he can affect, which tries to shake Hermione's belief in him and comes too close to succeeding. His voice drips with venom and cruelty and a sadistic _enjoyment_, and Hermione cringes and leans into his leg, ducking her head to press her cheek hard to the side of his knee, trying to appear cowed – and genuinely trying to ground herself in the midst of this horror that has only just begun. Malfoy reaches down in response and curls his fingers around the base of her neck, and soothes it down over her upper back as though she is a dog. "_Good_ bitch," he murmurs distractedly as he pets her, and his touch is humiliatingly comforting, and – and he _cannot_ be the man she kissed earlier. He _can't_ but he _is_, and Hermione thinks she is beginning to understand what Malfoy had meant, when he'd said he couldn't trust that she could even say _yes_ to him freely. She still disagrees, but she understands now. Because this is…madness.

"How _sweet_," Voldemort croons, and then looks around the table, grandiose as he gestures at Hermione. She must look a sight, she thinks sickly – on her hands and knees at Malfoy's side, her breasts hanging small but full, horribly exposed thanks to the design of the corset, the scraps of fabric that make up the knickers leaving the curves of her bum bare. The thick leather collar that is buckled around her throat rubs and cuts painfully into her flesh when she moves her head even the barest inch, and the silver chain attached to it – her _leash _– jangles faintly to remind her of its presence whenever Malfoy moves, or shifts his grip on it. She is a slave, pet, _dog_. Collared and leashed, and adorned at her masters' pleasure with expensive jewellery around her wrists and ankles, and a painted face and pretty hair. Ready to be used. To be _shared_.

"This slave, my dear…friends, is no mere Muggle filth or common Mudblood, but Hermione Jean Granger – Mudblood, Harry Potter's best friend, and formerly a fighter for the dwindling and ineffective _rebels_ who resist the new era that I have ushered in. She was rather pathetically easy for my Snatchers to catch, for someone who was dubbed the brightest witch of her age. But then, blood will out, will it not?" He chuckles mockingly, the sound high and breathy and edged with madness. "Mudbloods are no real _threat_ – they are nothing but an irritating _pestilence_."

"Too true, Lord Voldemort – too damned true," a wizard that Hermione doesn't recognise responds emphatically, American accent saturating his words. "We have a whole mess of trouble with mixed blood magic users back home. Diluting lineage, puttin' on airs, meddling where they don't _belong_. This revolution you're running here, well, that's something very interesting to us. The Muggles don't bother us much, speakin' honestly, as we have little to do with the dull masses of them, but Mudbloods? They need to be reminded of their _place_." The casual disgust and cruelty with which the wizard speaks chills Hermione to the core, and the slide of his eyes over her bared breasts makes her feel sick. She lowers her eyes back to the floor, feeling multiple pairs of lascivious eyes on her like red-hot brands now, wanting to _run_, because the thought of these _monsters_ touching her and hurting her and tearing her into nothing is _unbearable_.

"Indeed, Thaddeus. Now, Draco, come, sit down. Bring your pet with you. She may tend to you while we feast, and then afterward…well, perhaps she may take the place of _dessert_. A sweet treat, for our guests." Hermione squeezes her eyes tight shut, trying to deny Voldemort's words, and then the collar she wears around her neck digs sharp into her flesh as Malfoy jerks lightly on her leash. She mustn't respond quickly enough for appearance's sake, because he jerks it again, and she gags and whimpers involuntarily. A smatter of laughs at her wretched state reach her ears, and _Look at it…pretty thing…ripe little mouth…still a bit disobedient…be fun…good to see filth where it should be…its place…not too badly trained I suppose…needs a whipping in my opinion…_

"Move, bitch," Malfoy snaps at her in a harsh undertone and shoves at her side with his shin as the others return to conversation about things more important than she. Hermione complies immediately now, scrambling fast on her sore, bruising knees as Malfoy tugs at the leash. She crawls after him like a dog, and there are several more jeers and laughs as she passes by those seated at the table as she crawls in Malfoy's wake. A hand slaps her bared buttocks and she flinches, but keeps her eyes on the floor. A shoe shoves at her side, another presses down on her back, a hand drags sharp nails down her flank, a foot prods at one exposed breast, and still Malfoy keeps dragging her along. Finally, he sits, and the leash goes slack. "Heel," he snaps, and Hermione shudders and settles beside his chair at his feet, on her knees with her head bowed, pressing up against his leg for comfort. She doesn't bother to hide that; she figures that if Malfoy had really broken her, she would be just as likely to seek some kind of comfort from him.

According to Malfoy, that's essentially what _is_ happening.

They eat; Malfoy and the others with plates and cutlery at the table, and Hermione the occasional scrap from Malfoy's fingers as she kneels on the hard floor. She licks his fingers clean with small, subdued swipes of her tongue, as a slave would, stomach twisting with something pervertedly _good_ when he praises her softly and pets a hand through her hair. One of the American wizards is seated beside Malfoy, and leers down at Hermione as they eat. He reaches out with a small piece of meat, offering it down to her, and unsure of what to do she turns her head away, shrinking against Malfoy. "Be polite, Draco. Share the Mudblood whore with our guests," Voldemort ordered in a falsely light tone, curving a vicious smile at Hermione. Malfoy pauses for the barest fraction of a second, and then inclines his head in assent.

"Be a good little bitch and let him feed you, " Malfoy tells her, gripping her chin with his finger and thumb as he grates out the words in a warning tone. "Or I will need to discipline you, and you don't want that, do you? Do you understand me?"

She nods, adrift and uncertain of the rules she should follow, how she should act, or respond, and settles for a meek: "No, master. Yes, master."

The American wizard chuckles, and tugs at her hair painfully, turning her head toward him, and pushing the small titbit of meat into her mouth roughly. "Suck it clean, Mudblood," he says, his finger and thumb jammed inside her mouth, nails purposely cutting and jabbing at her gums and palate. She does as he says the best that she can without complaint or hesitation, although she winces and whimpers involuntarily when his sharp nails scrape and probe at especially tender spots. The American wizard grins, and withdraws his hand, patting her cheek with approval, before giving her left breast a casual squeeze, thumb bumping over her nipple, before he takes another piece of meat from his plate and holds Hermione's chin in his left hand, invading her mouth with his right thumb and finger again, rough and violating. She sucks and laps at his intruding digits as though she is eager and needy for them, choking and drooling on the meat and the wizard's fingers as he keeps her pinned there at his leisure.

She can't look at Malfoy, but from what she can tell he is eating his meal with great relish, outwardly unconcerned by what is happening to her.

He is unconcerned when they beat her.

He is unconcerned when her ribs crack.

He is unconcerned when they play at violating her with their fingers, when they magically pin her to the table and cut at her, when they mock her and spit on her.

He is unconcerned when they take turns using _crucios _and _imperios_ on her, using her and hurting her like sadistic children with a toy, making her crawl and grovel and lap at their feet, making her beg for their abuse, making her thank them for it.

He is _unconcerned_, sitting back with a glass of wine that he sips at from time to time, watching it all unfold with flat grey eyes.

* * *

><p>Later – much later – Malfoy heals Hermione's physical wounds as best he can as she sits silent and trembling on the edge of the bed, nearly catatonic, retreated within her own mind, blissfully disconnected from reality. Aware of everything going on as if through a fog, half-lost in her head. He <em>scourgifies <em>her when she shows no sign of being able to wash herself, and then strips the bloodied remnants of her whore's garb away, dressing her in soft pyjamas with shaking hands. "This will help," he tells her in a voice thick with tears as he slowly tips a dose of Dreamless Sleep potion between her swollen lips, one hand cupping her cheek very carefully, and she blinks slowly up at his wet grey eyes without comprehension. Hermione swallows the potion obediently, and lies down when Malfoy directs her to, curling up on her side with her knees drawn up and her hands tucked beneath her chin, feeling him tuck the bedclothes around her with firm, gentle motions. It makes her feel safe.

She falls asleep to his kiss on her forehead, to his tears falling _splat-splat _ on her temple as his lips leave her skin, his thumb brushing them away with one warm swipe.

She falls asleep to his cracked, horrified words whispered unsteadily in her ear: "I am – I am so sorry. Granger_. I am so fucking sorry_."

She falls asleep to the sound of broken, wretched sobbing in the bathroom, and the trickle feel of her own tears, leaking down her cheeks.

* * *

><p><em>Leave a review to feed the muse :)<em>


	7. Part Seven

**Edit:** As of the **28th of April 2015**, I have made major changes to this fic, thanks to constructive criticism by a reader. Scenes have been added, and the tone and content of many existing scenes have been altered or expanded upon. I hope that such alterations give a better picture of the dynamic between Draco and Hermione, which previously was not illustrated in a great deal of detail because I was trying to keep this fic short. However, the subject material does not lend itself to brevity, it seems - and in order to make a proper go of achieving what I set out to achieve, I have had to make some changes. I _recommend_ skimming back through the fic from the beginning before reading on, but doing so is not _necessary_. I hope you find the changes I've made to be positive ones!

Liss xx

* * *

><p><span><strong>Part Seven<strong>

Hermione wakes from dreamless sleep blind and alone in the dark, panic sweeping over her as the memories of what happened earlier that night come slamming back in a vicious maelstrom. It's too much too fast, and she sits up with a jerk, gasping for air, injuries protesting sharply. She is no longer disconnected and locked away in her mind, but fully present and excruciatingly vulnerable to the onslaught. She remembers it all, and it hurts so much. Her gasps turn into sobs that tear from her raggedly as she pulls her knees up to her chest, and buries her face in her hands.

"Oh god. Oh Merlin." She whimpers and sobs softly, the cuts that crisscross her flesh stinging, the inside of her mouth raw and throbbing, her breasts and the insides of her thighs bruised and sore from pinching, invading hands. "Oh _god_." It all happened. It all really happened and she just wants to hide from the truth of it, to claw it from her mind. There is movement in the dark, the sound of rustlings and then a dim light appears, shining faint through the fingers Hermione has pressed to her eyes.

"_Granger_. Granger, hey, it's okay," Malfoy says, startlingly close, voice frantic and soothing at once. "It's okay, you're safe now. It's over." She lowers her hands and stares up at him through wet, swollen eyes as her breath hitches. He's standing over her in only his pyjama trousers and the swathe of bandaging around his torso, his wand in hand and a _lumos_ illuminating him in the darkness of the room, his expression helpless and pained as he stares at her. A sudden fury wells up in her, and her tear-wet fists clench hard.

"_It's not okay_," she chokes out through her uneven sobs. "It's not okay, and I'm _not _bloody well _safe._"

Malfoy flinches back, but he doesn't try to deny the truth, doesn't try to contradict her, weary defeat creeping over his features. "No," he says, smudging a hand tiredly over his face, and then pushing his hair back, shoulders slumping. "You're not. You're not, and I am so sorry. I wanted to – I _want_ to..." He trails off, looking away. "…but I can't…"

"Protect me?" Hermione fills in the blank bitterly, with a wet snuffle and a hiccup, not knowing whether she should appreciate the anguish and guilt he is radiating, or be angry at him for even hinting at the way her ordeal has affected him. Somehow, it's the anger that comes out as she looks up at him, acutely aware of all the places she hurts, all the ways she was tortured. "Of course you can't. I don't fucking _expect _you to, Malfoy!"

He hisses in frustration, eyes narrowing and shoulders tensing, hands flexing, his own anger seeping up through the cracks. "What _do _you expect then, Granger?"

They stare at each other for a long moment, and then all of a sudden Hermione knows; what she _expects_, as he says. It doesn't matter how wrong and ill-advised it might be – it's all she has and she _needs _ it. The comfort. She swallows down a sob, picking at loose threads in the bedcover as she steadies her breathing, says in a small, cracked voice: "Sleep with me?" A breath judders out of Malfoy's lungs, and his pupils swamp his eyes.

"Wh-what? _Now?_" He takes an unconscious step toward her, his legs bumping up against the side of the mattress. His eyes are fixed wide and wanting as he stares down at her, his pupils still blown wide and fingers curling tight at his sides, but misguidedly noble protests still spill from his lips. "Granger, we _talked_ about -"

"_No!_ I didn't mean _that_. Just… I mean…" Hermione reaches out to Malfoy's hand - her fingers curl around his, tugging gently, curling and stroking, _pleading_. He closes his hand automatically, trapping her fingers, rubbing his thumb over the backs of her knuckles as if he can't stop himself from touching her. "For the record I don't care if you think it's..._taking advantage, _Malfoy, but – but seriously you stupid fucking _git_, that's just about the furtherest thing away from what I want right now. I just..._Iwanttobeheld_," she whispers in a blurred rush, almost ashamed to admit her weakness and her need. Malfoy eyes her long enough for the silence to grow oppressive, and then sighs in surrender.

"Make room then, Granger," he says, squeezing her hand tight and trying for a reassuring smile that comes out wan and lopsided. "Budge over."

The bed is plenty big enough for them to sleep without touching, but that isn't what either of them want. Malfoy gingerly settles down on his back, and when Hermione shuffles closer to him, he opens his arms to her. She sinks into him eagerly, head nestled at the juncture of his chest and shoulder, his arm around her waist and her hand resting balled up at his sternum, and he is warm skin and rough-soft bandaging, and his fingers card through her hair. He asks her softly if she needs more healing or numbing charms, or for the _lumos_ to stay on, bombarding her with concern. When Hermione shakes her head no to all of them, Malfoy puts his wand down and tucks the blankets up around her, kissing the top of her head as if she is a child.

They are cocooned in the enveloping dark, and Hermione feels nearly safe.

"Do you...need to talk? About…?" Malfoy asks eventually, hushed in the silence that is only disturbed by their breathing, and Hermione shakes her head 'no', only to reconsider almost immediately.

"I don't blame you, but. I can't stop thinking about. How. You...you just _watched_," she says haltingly, and Malfoy makes a choked sound but doesn't speak, his body going stiff with tension under her. "You _watched_ while they…they _hurt_ me. Like I was _nothing_."

"You're not nothing, Granger. You're _not_. You're _infinitely_ fucking better than anyone in this damn place, including me," he tells her so intently that it almost sounds angry. "And fuck, I'm _so sorry_, Granger. I know that doesn't mean anything to you, I know that doesn't undo what happened, but I'm _sorry_. I fucking _hate_ that I just sat there and let them do those things," he grinds out, tense and furious. "But if I tried to stop them, or I let them see that I cared..."

"Then we'd be both be being tortured right now? With no chance of ever escaping?" she wobbles out, and he nods shortly.

"Yeah."

"I know," she whispers, because she understands that intellectually, even as she recoils emotionally. It just _feels_ so awful, even though she knows that it's the only option. He echoes her thoughts, sad and defeated.

"But knowing it's the least worst option doesn't exactly make it any easier for you."

"No, it doesn't, " she agrees in her wobbling whisper, and lets out an uneven sigh against his chest. Her own chest feels tight and her eyes are stinging with the need to cry. "It...really doesn't." Her chin trembles as tears spill over in a silent flood: "I'm so _afraid_. I just - just want it to _stop_." Hermione shakes against Malfoy, her chest heaving and tears tickling over her nose and cheeks to plop down onto his bare skin. "I want to go home, Malfoy."

He wipes her tears away with gentle sweeps of one thumb, chest rising and falling under her cheek as he sighs, tired and heartsore. His tone is oddly tender in the darkness. "I know. I know. And I will do everything in my power to get you home, I swear it. No matter what it takes."

* * *

><p>If healing isn't linear, as they say, then neither is coping it seems.<p>

The day after the dinner and the torture, and the night spent curled in Malfoy's arms, Hermione shuts herself in the bathroom. She stays in there all day, crying and raging, and scrubbing herself raw - until blood blossoms in pinpricks under her skin and the cuts inflicted on her open up again, staining the bathwater pink. When Malfoy tries to speak to her through the door and persuade her to come out, to let him help, she screams at him, incoherent and furious and full of blame. His coaxing only results in the - wizarding - shampoo bottle becoming a missile, hurled at the door and breaking into shards of lead cut glass. Hermione sits in the cooling, murky pink bathwater and cries, arms wrapped around her knees and face buried in the hollow between her knees and body.

* * *

><p>The next night, she wakes from potion-induced dreamless sleep to low lamplight and Malfoy slumped over at the table, snoring faintly. She clambers out of bed and walks on silent feet to him, floor cold beneath her soles. He looks drained even in sleep, a little furrow between his brows, dark shadows under his eyes, the stubble dusting his jaw and cheeks catching the light. "Malfoy?" She reaches out and brushes her fingers over his shoulder. He jerks upright blearily, fingers closing around his wand and body coiling with tension, before he wakes enough to register Hermione.<p>

"Granger. Wha-what's wrong?" is the first thing Malfoy says, his attention snapping fully onto her, alert and overflowing with concern. Hermione blinks at him, experiencing a sudden surreal moment of disbelief; this is Malfoy, sitting here in front her, full of worry for her. This is Malfoy whose hand she takes, who she tugs back to the bed. And for a blurring moment of something rather like mental double vision, it is the strangest feeling to feel so _comfortable_ with Malfoy. He touches his fingers to her cheek, the gesture stopping her at the edge of the bed, and asking her again if she is all right. Asking her what she needs.

And Hermione shrugs and tells him: "Nothing I can have," and when she says the words, an odd sense of calm suffuses her, and the next words are easy to say. "Except the bed is cold, and..." Malfoy gets the hint. He slides in beside her, tugging her close - the big spoon to her little - and she falls asleep in warmth that she can pretend is safety. That she can burrow into, _forgetting _the outside world as sleep creeps ever closer, washing over her in a dreamless, welcome fog.

* * *

><p>Several nights later Hermione sits up in her armchair until dawn comes, huddled and blank-eyed, and when Malfoy crouches before her and speaks to her in low, worried whispers, she can only shake her head, voice gone.<p>

He refuses to leave her while she's like that, sitting silently with her until nearly dawn, when he falls asleep on the floor at her feet, his head lolling awkwardly against the base of the chair. Hermione unfolds herself when she notices the change in his breathing and the awkward twist to his head, and puts her legs down, nudging his head so that it falls more comfortable against her thigh. Malfoy stirs in his sleep then, lifting his head enough that dark grey eyes meet hers sleepy and dazed, and she smiles down at him in the pale light of dawn, feeling fondness well up.

"Go back to sleep," she whispers hoarsely, nudging her hand against his head again, and he settles against her, his head pillowing on her thigh and his fingers curling up over her knee. And after a while, she sleeps too.

* * *

><p>When Malfoy's bandages come off one evening she cries over his back, horribly scarred and rough now, never to be as it was before, and it seems too much an analogy for herself. For what this captivity has stripped away from her. And Malfoy just smiles and pats her hand, shrugging off her sympathy, seeming uninterested in seeing how bad the damage to his back is. Minimising it. Dismissing it. "It doesn't matter," he tells her after she's finished unwrapping the horror of his back. "It was worth it. I was glad. It - it kept you safe for a little longer."<p>

"You shouldn't have," she says in a tear-clogged voice, sitting on the bed beside him as he pulls on a tee-shirt, her nose running and one of Malfoy's handkerchiefs crumpled into a sopping ball in her hand. "It wasn't worth it. Not when they ended up - taking me anyway. You shouldn't have..."

"_No_. I shouldn't have let them take you the second time. I should have -" Malfoy begins, features tight and filled with self-loathing, and Hermione shakes her head in a denial, and leans forward, buries her face against his shoulder and breathes until she thinks she can speak without her voice breaking.

"I'm sorry, Malfoy." Her forehead against his upper arm, and he is warm and solid and she wants to stay like this forever.

"Don't be, Granger. It doesn't matter. Really." And his other hand comes up and cradles her head very gently, fingers soothing over her hair.

But when Hermione wakes up that night to an empty bed, she creeps to the bathroom door and sees him shirtless there, eying his back over his shoulder in the mirror. His expression is grim and just a little wounded. His torso is almost unmarred from the front, only marked by slim scars here and there, but otherwise lean and smooth and beautiful. His back is ugly. Ruined.

She wants to trace the scars with the tips of her fingers, and kiss every livid, knotted stripe in that overlaying quilt of scar tissue, and the intensity of her desire to do so frightens her. It is more than just thankfulness, she thinks. And she lies awake for a long time, eyes shut, remembering the feel of the scars under her fingers as she'd removed the bandaging.

* * *

><p>She's always so scared that he'll be unable to protect her again. It's hard to keep food down, and headaches plague her. The weight drops off and she keeps the curtains drawn, growing thin and pallid in the suite that comprises her entire world, Malfoy the only other occupant of that world. She feels claustrophobic. Panicky. She watches the gardens through cracks in the curtains, and thinks of Harry and Ron, and the memory of them is distant and coloured with nostalgia, as though entire lifetimes have gone by since she saw them last.<p>

* * *

><p>Hermione doesn't try to kiss Malfoy again, although she daydreams about it, once her injuries have healed and the sense of violation has eased in its visceral intensity. She fantasises about doing things with him that make her insides twist up deliciously instead of with fear, but the right moment never seems to come. And she can never seem to quite get up the courage anyway. She worries he was right that it would be taking advantage, even though it feels like a free choice, and she wonders if she should care if he is right. So Hermione doesn't kiss him, even if she wants to. And she does. Want to. She wants to a lot.<p>

But Malfoy kisses her when she looks at him a certain way, or presses close against him; her forehead, the insides of her wrists, the top of her head, and the round of her shoulder, in the dark when she invites him into the bed. She smiles then, and hums at the fleeting sense of luxurious contentment it gives her, but he never takes it any further, never kisses her mouth, and she is always a little relieved. Little kisses and touches and gestures of comfort are safe, are irreproachable, are wanted. But sharing any more than this unspoken, nearly-platonic intimacy could become...messy, and Hermione doesn't think she can handle that.

* * *

><p>Voldemort doesn't order Hermione's presence again - yet - but Malfoy returns to his duties as Death Eater. The evenings that he returns smelling of burnt flesh, or stained with spatters of dark blood, are the only ones that they don't always share a bed. Those are the evenings that are...not good, for either of them.<p>

Malfoy is trying to get her out though. He went to the drop point as soon as he was able to slip away, and left a message there detailing the situation and demanding an urgent meeting. He goes back out to check if the Order has collected the message and left a portkey for a face to face meeting every chance he gets, but so far the message has been untouched. Or so Malfoy says, and Hermione trusts him.

He has done everything possible to protect her so far - the evidence of that is scarred rough and vivid into the ruin of his back.

Since the dinner, Malfoy has been carefully distracting Voldemort from Hermione's presence with other issues, appearing to go above and beyond in his duties in the hopes that he can gain enough favour to be allowed keep her exclusively to himself should Voldemort request he _share_ her again. Happily, Voldemort has been occupied by the idea of furthering his conquest of the wizarding world - the visiting American contingent having left him unimpressed - and Hermione has been left alone for now, still trapped within the confining walls of Malfoy's suite, but untouched.

* * *

><p>Days tick by in a monotony that is exhausting in its very self, and Hermione feels like she has been here forever. The time before her captivity seems unreal; so long ago, memories so fuzzy compared to the vivid suffering in her recent past, and the thought of ever getting back to Harry and Ron and the Order seems like a childish fantasy. This is Hermione's life now. It has only been a little less than two months now, but this captivity has eaten who she is, devoured everything and left her hollow and hopeless and turned inside out. Hermione can't even imagine going back. So much has changed. How would she face them all? How could she ever hope to fit in again? She knows it isn't her fault, but it <em>happened<em> and it can't be taken back, or fixed, and if she ever escapes from this hell she doesn't think returning to the Order will end the ordeal, only start the next part of it.

Hermione has changed, she acknowledges as she sits in her armchair watching the clock as it ticks around to 5pm, an open book half-read on her lap. How she _feels_ has changed. She used to have feelings for Ron; fluttery, wanting, giggly feelings. She used to have romantic, sweet dreams of what could happen between them when one of them was finally brave enough to make the first move, and now all of that is…gone. Crushed, erased, dashed to pieces beneath the weight of reality. But what she feels for Malfoy now seems like a betrayal, what she feels and can't deny and doesn't _want_ to deny despite her guilt and unease. It's not fluttery or giggly, and if she believes what Malfoy says - she doesn't - not even healthy. But she feels inextricably connected to him now, tied together by what they have been through, are going through. If she does escape, the thought of leaving him here is intolerable. His ability to stoically do what must be done no matter what is safety to her, his arms around her at night are comfort, his mouth at her wrists is _want_, his very presence is _home_.

Everything has been turned inside out, and her heart is raw and exposed, and Hermione is just flailing to keep afloat.

The door swings open as the clock approaches 5.30, and Hermione's eyes snap from the clock to the doorway, where Malfoy stands with shoulders bowed and grey exhaustion written on his face. The weight of death and torture and guilt carved into the lines of him, and his eyes meet hers shadowed and weary, but lighting with something at the sight of her, and she feels something tremble in her stomach that makes her very scared. Malfoy tries to smile and fails, and the hand he shoves the door shut with is spattered with dried blood. His shoes thump against the floor by the door one by one as he toes them off, and then he sags back against the door and pushes his hair off his face - only for it to fall back immediately, palest platinum strands flopping almost into his tired eyes.

"He had me on clean up with Aster, in a nearby wizarding village that he'd decimated," Malfoy says, and his voice is a smoke-roughened rasp, and the muscles in his jaw twitch and jump as he steels himself against the memories of the day. He shuts his eyes for a long moment, head falling back against the door, breathing. "Some of them were - were still alive when Aster put them on the fires. He likes... I managed to put most of them out of their misery, but not fast enough. Never fucking fast enough." His voice cracks and breaks over the words, expression pained; eyes still screwed shut and brow furrowed. Hermione thinks of twitching limbs and burnt screams, of the stench of flesh and faeces in the smoke, and a wretched empathy for both the victims and Malfoy seizes her.

"_Merlin_," she murmurs. "That's _awful_." It's an enormous understatement, but there's nothing else to say. Malfoy opens his eyes, and from across the room she can see they are bloodshot from the smoke.

"Yeah. It was...bad," he tells her, drained of feeling and looking shell-shocked. "Really fucking bad." He sighs, still slumped against the door as if he hasn't the strength to move, watching her as she gets up from the armchair and moves to stand in front of him, hovering awkwardly. Malfoy is clearly curious; she hasn't done this before. She always avoids him when his clothing smells of suffering and death, instead of the usual, indefinable scent that is _him_. "Granger?"

He is exhausted, bloodstained, and guilt hangs heavy on him like it always does; the strain of doing unforgivable things in the hopes that he can do some good, that he can help bring it all to an end forever. For the greater good. Hermione still cannot reconcile herself to accept the idea of making sacrifices in the name of the greater good. She cannot approve of how the Order is using Malfoy. Not because of what Malfoy does - if he didn't do it, another Death Eater would, and without the mercy he tries to provide where he can - but because of what it does to him. Staining his soul irreparably. Giving him this guilt.

"Granger? Are you all right?" Malfoy reaches out tentatively, gathering up her hand in his, fingers tangling. In a second his expression shifts, his own exhaustion pushed back in favour of worry for Hermione.

Hermione stares at Malfoy and thinks: _I care about him. Too much. Too much._

"...yeah. I'm..." She steps forward blindly and presses her face hard against his chest, breathing through her mouth, her hands grabbing fistfuls of his shirt at his sides. Frantic and clinging, her heart thundering in her ears as she thinks: _can this be love?_ It doesn't feel like anything she feels - _felt_ for Ron, not at all. What she had felt for Ron was warm and soft and tingly, a crush that had deepened with friendship and time. What she feels for Malfoy is raw and wrenching and frightening, born out of need, and she doesn't want to name it _love_. "I'm fine."

Malfoy had frozen for a moment as Hermione had thudded hard against him, but now his arms come up around her, tight enough to make her mending ribs protest. He buries his face in her hair, and breathes deeply, as though he's luxuriating in her.

"Merlin, you smell so good," he mumbles against the top of her head, one hand sliding up her back to tangle and play in the curling ends of her hair. Then: "You're sure you're okay?"

"Yes. Fine." She isn't. Hermione really isn't, in so many ways. She shouldn't be feeling these feelings for Malfoy. This tenderness, this worry, this _care_. It frightens her. She goes up on tippy toes and places a gentle kiss on a clean patch of his skin at his jaw. "I'm just..." Exhausted. In constant fear. Glad Malfoy has returned. Filled with sympathy for him at what he's had to do today. How does she explain all of that? And even if she could, what would be the point? "...just fine. You should go wash up." She draws away and smiles at Malfoy, watching after him as he makes his slow and aching way into the bathroom. She _cares._

* * *

><p>Instead of spooning as always, Hermione turns to face Malfoy when he comes to bed that night. She presses her head to his chest, one arm sliding over Malfoy's side, one leg entangling itself between his two. There is nothing remotely platonic to this intimate clutch, her pelvis snugging against his crotch, and Hermione's heart pounds fast as Malfoy's breath catches. She can feel something become slightly more apparent; she thinks with a stupid, embarrassed shyness that he is no longer entirely flaccid, the bulge of his penis stiffening just a little at her closeness. With her heart in her throat, she rocks her hips out, pushing her pelvis against the growing stiffness she can feel, and Malfoy makes a throaty, stifled sound and his fingers dig into her back.<p>

"M-merlin. _Granger_," he grinds out unsteadily, like a warning and a plea at once. A flutter twists deliciously in Hermione's abdomen in response, a surge of want that seizes her hard. She swallows dryly, and slips her hand down between them, fingers searching until they close delicately over the length of his penis, where it juts out against the pyjama trousers he wears. Nervousness washes over her in an overwhelming flood as she grasps him; hot and hard and _real_ in her hand. Too real, she realises, remembering the revel where he'd...and _oh Merlin she can't do this._

"I-" Hermione stutters and gulps and her fingers loosen their firm grip around his dick. She doesn't want to tease him, but she doesn't want to do this either. She's scared. Desire is still twisting in her belly and fantasies flicker temptingly in her mind's eye, but the reality is...too much.

Malfoy inhales long and slow, and then gently but firmly removes her hand from his erection. She lets her breath out on a sigh; disappointment and relief both. He pulls her even closer then, until she is moulded to him, and places a kiss upon the crown of her head. "Go to sleep," he tells her softly, as his fingers card through her hair. "It's late."

She does.

* * *

><p>Days pass. Days and days and days, and Hermione thinks she will go mad with waiting for the Order to send word that they have received Malfoy's message. "You sent it weeks ago," she says, speaking her fear as complaint as she pushes her food uneaten around the plate. "And you've dropped other information since. If you're a valuable informant, why aren't they checking the drop point?"<p>

They are eating dinner together at the small table in his suite, and Hermione is watching Malfoy carefully. He has been acting just the slightest bit strange the past few days - a little distant and guarded, and she's noticed the added grim sadness about him, as much as he's tried to hide it. It makes her suspicious, a feeling that she hates, because he doesn't deserve it, and because she has no choice but to trust him.

"Maybe they haven't just haven't been able to check the drop point yet," Malfoy offers, eyes on his plate, and he doesn't sound at all convincing to her. "They've not always been regular."

"Maybe they've been attacked. Forced onto the retreat. Maybe the people in the Order who know where the drop point is have been killed or captured. Maybe you've been exposed and we only don't know because your master is toying with us," Hermione rushes out, filled with fear for her friends, and for Malfoy and herself. Tears well up and she blinks them away. "I just wish I knew everyone was all right. It's not knowing if Harry and Ron and - and everyone else are all right that's the worst part of this Merlin-damned _waiting_."

"Really?" Malfoy lifted his eyes from his food, looking Hermione over uncertainly.

"_Yes_, really!" Hermione snaps without thinking, and then narrows her eyes on him. "..._why? _Malfoy, what do you know?"

"No. Nothing. I know nothing. Except that I've not heard of any key Order members dying." He sounds utterly truthful and genuine.

"No," she insists. "No, you _know_ something that you're hiding from me."

"Granger, honestly..."

"Tell me. Tell me now or I can't ever trust you again, and Malfoy, I _need_ to trust you. _Please_." There is a long pause where Malfoy just stares at her. And then he lays down his fork and takes a deep breath, and when he lets it out again, she can see he's made a decision. He stands and goes to his desk, unlocking one of the drawers and pulling out a rolled up tube of parchment, slightly crumpled. He hands it to Hermione with clenched jaw and darkened eyes, anger and worry radiating off him.

"I'm sorry," he tells her, as she unrolls it and he - standing behind her and just to one side - taps the parchment with his wand, words coalescing out of nothingness. "I'm sorry, Granger."

_Judas: prior messages received and understood. _

_Unfortunately extraction of asset not possible at this time, with Riddle in residence. The risk is too high. Keep asset safe, but __do not jeopardise cover__. Further contact will be made regarding extraction plans as soon as Riddle leaves residence on business he cannot easily be recalled from. _

_Request: information regarding Riddle's plans for American wizarding society._

_Knight_

Hermione turned stricken eyes on Malfoy. "H-who's Knight?" she asked through numbed lips, feel cold right through to her core. Dull. Hopeless. Lifeless. Abandoned. _Dead_. They were leaving her here. They knew that she was here and they didn't _care_.

"Kingsley Shacklebolt," Malfoy said, voice flat with a cold kind of distaste. Then: "Granger..." He touches his hand to her shoulder, sympathy saturating the way he said her name. She brushes his hand off, eyes stinging with tears as she thinks over and over: they left me here.

_"You knew. _You knew and you didn't tell me. How - how long? How long did you know? When did you get this?" Hermione waves the parchment, her breath skewing uneven as her chest constricts with grief and panic. They knew and they left her. _Do not jeopardise cover_. The Order had assessed the situation and decided she was expendable, and _yes_ she was willing to die for the cause but _god_, the reality of it wasn't some noble death, but humiliation and pain and fear and she didn't want it. She was a coward.

"Five days." He takes the parchment from her fingers and taps it with his wand again, returning it to its blank state, and then to the drawer in his desk.

"Five..._why?_" Hermione doesn't understand. She stares at Malfoy in bewilderment as he sits back down opposite her. "You _knew_ I was waiting. Why would you keep this from me?"

"Because you had hope." Malfoy's features twitch and he rubs a hand over his face; he looks worn and guilt-ridden, weighed down with the strain of everything he carries. "You still had hope when you were waiting, and now you don't. Don't deny it, Granger," he says as she opens her mouth to protest half-heartedly. "Don't even _try_. I can see it in your eyes." And he's right, damn him.

"You were trying to protect me," she realises dully.

"Yeah. Yeah, Granger, I was. I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't have kept it from you. But when I got that reply I - I couldn't give it to you. I didn't want to take that hope away from you. I didn't want to be the one to fucking _hurt_ you again." Malfoy sinks his head into his hands, the next words muffled and wretched, choking out raggedly, his control shattered. "I'm _sick_ of being the one who fucking _hurts_ you." Hermione stares at him wide-eyed and wordless. She doesn't want to see him like this. Can't stand seeing him like this. He's supposed to be strong - holding them together, strong enough for both of them, keeping her safe. It feels like her universe is tipping. And then she tells herself not to be so damned stupid.

"Malfoy. Malfoy, look at me." His eyes are bloodshot and wet when he meets her gaze, and she stares him down evenly, even though she feels sick to her stomach. "Never hide anything from me, that you think I might need to know, or want to know. Never. You understand me?" Her voice is a whiplash, and she's shocked that she still ahs that bossy tone in her, after everything. He looks like he wants to prevaricate, so she elaborates. "I need to trust you absolutely, no matter what. And I can't do that if I know you're willing to hide things from me, even if you're doing that for that - the right reasons. I need the truth. _Please_, Malfoy. If I can't trust you, I have _nothing_."

He nods. Once. "The truth. Okay." And then his face twists and shifts through anger and self-loathing and grief, and settles on a raw sort of compassion. "Granger...what they've decided...it's really all they _can_ do. You get that, right? If they tried while the Dark Lord was here - it wouldn't go well for anyone. It's not like they're choosing to just _leave_ you, even if the message makes it sound that way." He is desperate to reassure her, and Hermione nods. He's right - she sees that - but it doesn't matter.

"I know," she whispers as she pushes away the meal she no longer has an appetite for. "I know."

* * *

><p><em>Leave a review to feed the muse :)<em>


	8. Part Eight

**Edit:** As of the **28th of April 2015**, I have made major changes to this fic, thanks to constructive criticism by a reader. Scenes have been added, and the tone and content of many existing scenes have been altered or expanded upon. I hope that such alterations give a better picture of the dynamic between Draco and Hermione, which previously was not illustrated in a great deal of detail because I was trying to keep this fic short. However, the subject material does not lend itself to brevity, it seems - and in order to make a proper go of achieving what I set out to achieve, I have had to make some changes. I _recommend_ skimming back through the fic from the beginning before reading on, but doing so is not _necessary_. I hope you find the changes I've made to be positive ones!

Liss xx

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><p><span><strong>Part Eight<strong>

"If you are so eager to keep the mudblood to yourself, then it occurs to me that you must surely be willing to pay a price for the privilege of exclusivity. For the privilege of being the only one to hurt her, and use her, and make her grovel and beg," the Dark Lord croons, lipless smile creasing his ashen skin. Hermione ducks her head to avoid those vicious, cruel eyes, feeling flayed raw under Voldemort's gaze, and the stares of the handful of Death Eaters who sit and lounge around the hall, watching with a lazy kind of interest. It is only the beginning of the revel, and Hermione thinks that Malfoy dragging her in here, half-naked and leashed, is the most exciting thing that has happened this evening. Yet. "For the right to be the only one she names Master. Are you, Draco, my boy? Are you willing to pay a price?"

"_Yes_," Malfoy says without a moment of hesitation, nearly too eager, and Hermione can feel his eyes burning down into her with a raw need that she hopes Voldemort will read into what he expects - hate instead of the desire to protect. She stiffens though, afraid. Voldemort's prices are always too high, and she doesn't want him to be hurt again. Malfoy's feet shift beside her - black shoes shining in her peripheral vision - and the chain leash jangles faintly as he adjusts his grip. "_Yes_, my Lord. I want to be the only one she weeps for. The only one she begs to stop. I want to _own_ her," he grates, his hand tugging at the leash and Hermione gasps fruitlessly for air, choking and gagging as the collar digs in. She rears up off her elbows, like a dog dragged onto its hind legs, retching and flailing, fingers curling over the collar and mindlessly trying to wrench it away, to stop it from choking her.

_Please_, she tries to gasp. _Please_. But she can't breathe. Can't...can't speak. She tries to get up, but something strikes the backs of her knees and she goes down again, bare knees slamming into the hardwood floor. She would cry out at the pain, only she can't get the breath to. Her head feels hot and swollen, ears too full, and pulse sluggish but consuming - _thump...thump...thump...thump_. Tears streak her cheeks and inside her head she _begs _as she sputters wordless. Then the leash goes slack, and she slumps to a pile at Malfoy's feet, choking and gasping and sobbing, fingertips clutching and scrabbling at the ground as her nose runs and her tears drip and she drools and sputters. "And I want to _control_ the bitch, body and soul," Malfoy finishes, satisfaction dark in his voice, and Hermione reminds herself that he's just trying to be convincing, because it is their lives at stake, always their lives are in his hands and he has to be _convincing_. She knows that he is only acting - she _trusts _him, damnit, but always, _always_ in her dazed panic it gets so hard to separate fact from fiction.

Her eyes flick upwards in the ensuing silence, and she sees Voldemort's inhuman grin widen further as he stares down from his throne of bodies into Malfoy's face. "I can...understand that desire, my boy. That desire to be the only one. But attachment - even the attachment of hatred - can lead to weakness. If she is yours and yours alone, perhaps you will become...fond of her, like one might become fond of a House Elf. One might be persuaded to pity such a creature, especially when the creature tries to curry one's favour, to be obedient and _good_ in order to avoid your wrath. One could become...confused." Malfoy is still and silent beside Hermione. Silence is safest, sometimes. The Dark Lord smiles.

"So, Draco, I will help you remember your respective places - slave and master - by first reversing the roles and letting the Mudblood play at owning you." Hermione freezes, blood running cold because does that mean what she thinks it does? "And you will see that a slave can only ever _hate_, and a master can only ever_ hurt, _because the Mudblood will illustrate it's hate by hurting you in vengeance for what you have done to it up until now, and you will feel the hurt and hate it for that, and _remember_." _No_. She can't do that. She can't hurt him. She_ can't..._ Hermione trembles on the ground, the lace French knickers she wears itching at her, and the bones of the corset digging into her flesh, the collar around her neck heavy and painful on the developing bruises Malfoy caused before, the feel of it making her want to panic when combined with the suffocating constriction of the corset. She can't.

"My Lord..." Malfoy says in careful tones of polite surprise. "My Lord, I am not..._confused_."

"Will you pay the price, or not?" the Dark Lord snaps, features twisted with a rage that terrifies Hermione, and then wrests control of his anger, smiling thinly again. He lazes back upon the bodies, his sharp nails tracing a bloodless cut on the dead flesh beneath his hand. "I have little patience, my boy. I am _bored_ and I am beset by the idiocy of those around me, and I would have you either amuse me, or be gone from my presence and leave the Mudblood here, to be placed with the other slaves for communal entertainment." Hermione can hear Malfoy's throat click as he swallows dryly, and she sneaks a glance upward. He is ashen, chin up and shoulders back, jaw set firmly; she wonders for a moment if the Sorting Hat would still place him in Slytherin, because the courage on his face is pure Gryffindor.

"I will pay the price, My Lord."

"Very well. Unleash the Mudblood, Draco, and make it to stand." His fingers tremble as he unhooks the chain leash from Hermione's collar. She can feel them, shaking against her skin.

"Up," he tells her, eyes flat and cold and burning with hatred, wrenching at the collar so that she cries out in pain and scrambles up obediently. "Up, you bitch." Hermione sways on her feet, eyes on the ground and fingers at her throat, gagging a little, pain flaring in the flesh she touches beneath the collar.

"Mudblood," the Dark Lord says, all dark, sadistic amusement, and Hermione wants nothing more than to turn and run. She keeps her head down, bowing it in deference, afraid to meet his eyes because unlike Malfoy her Occlumency skills are pitiful. "You will hurt him until I order you to halt. And do not be afraid, Mudblood; your Master understands that this is the price to pay for his ownership of you, and he will not punish you for what you do to him here today, understood?" She nods quickly, watching from behind her ragged hair as Voldemort's gaze turns to Malfoy. "It wouldn't be any fun if she was too afraid to harm you, now would it, my boy?"

"No, my Lord," Malfoy whispers, standing straight and stoic beside her, trembling ever-so-slightly. "It would not."

"Wormtail - bring the tools forward," Voldemort orders with a lazy wave of his hand, and the servant hurries to do so, rushing to the table of torture instruments that sit at the right of Voldemort's throne and carefully hovering it forward, to settle in front of Hermione. She stares at it, unable to breathe as surely as if the collar is choking her again. Whips. Chains. Shining instruments that looked like pliers, and short-bladed shears, and thin, wickedly sharp probes. Knives. A heavy silver rod the size and shape of a truncheon. Pincers. Things that look remarkably sexual in nature. What she thinks is a Muggle cattle prod. A blowtorch-type lighter.

They haven't given her anything magical to use. She isn't surprised. She's a mudblood to them, not a witch, or a person. She is sickly glad, because magic can be so much crueller than Muggle means of inflicting pain, and she couldn't handle that. But despite that gladness… No. _No_, she can't fucking do this. Hermione backs away a step, and then Malfoy's gaze pins her to the spot. She can read the plea in his eyes as surely as if he were speaking the words to her: _do it_. _Do it._ "Well, this should be just _fascinating_," Voldemort says with a ghoulish cheerfulness, and sits forward with the air of someone on the edge of his seat with anticipation. "Be a good slave, Draco, my boy."

His eyes still on hers - _do it, Granger _- as he slowly sinks to his knees in front of her, at her feet, at her mercy. Helpless and vulnerable and exposed, waiting for her to hurt him as he slowly strips off his shirt, and then bows his head until his forehead touches her bare foot. Grovelling in front of her. Hermione stares at Malfoy's lean, mutilated back and thinks about what she is going to have to do if she wants them to live through this, and she has to fight back a surge of nausea, bile caustic in the back of her throat. Her hands tremble and her stomach churns as she stares down at Malfoy, aware of all the eyes upon them, watching.

What is she supposed to do now? Her mind races and spins. Everyone thinks she hates Malfoy - everyone _has_ to think she hates him, or his cover will be blown and they'll both be tortured to death. Christ. Is this how Malfoy felt every time he was expected to play his part? Terrified and sick to his stomach and wracked with guilt and self-loathing? And yet horribly determined to do whatever it takes to enable them to survive and live to regret the actions later, when they are…if not safe, then at least out of immediate danger.

Hermione takes a deep breath and tries to lift her foot. Malfoy's head is in the way and she bites her lip and then - steeling herself - yanks her foot out from beneath his head and shoves it back hard. A push to the crown of his head, not a kick, but it's firm and unexpected, and sends him tilting to one side with a wobbling gasp of surprise. Her stomach turns at the uncertainty and unwilling fear in the sound.

Hopefully those watching will take her hesitation as being ingrained fear of reprisals, and not true reluctance. Just in case she shoves him with her bare foot again as he tries to sit up, setting it against his shoulder and pushing, and he tips back, hands flying out to his sides to brace himself. She forces herself to smile, thinking that right about now she should be discovering how good it feels to know her master is powerless. Malfoy stares up at Hermione blankly - _make it believable, Granger_ - and she bites the inside of her cheek hard enough to bleed, and stomps down on his diaphragm.

Malfoy jack-knifes double with a soundless groan as she drives the air out of him violently, clutching his middle and tipping onto his side. Wheezing moans wrench out of his throat after a moment, pained and pathetic as he struggles for air that he can't properly draw, and she watches with a forced faint smile. Someone laughs, and she flinches at the sound in the silence. Malfoy stays curled in a defensive ball even after he's gotten his breath back, and Hermione feels ill as she stares at him like this.

"Don't be shy, Mudblood," Voldemort says in warning and encouragement both, and Hermione shudders. She shuts her eyes.

"Yes, My Lord," she whispers. The problem is, she thinks, is that she's never tortured anyone before. Stupidly - _hilariously_ - she has no fucking idea what to do as she pads over to the table the torture tools are laid out on, and surveys them. There are four criterion by which she will have to assess the instruments; does she know what it does, can she bring herself to use it, does she think Malfoy will be able to stand it, and will it be believable? She has a dreadful feeling she may have to compromise on some of those, particularly the second one. Perhaps she will have to compromise on all. She wants to vomit.

In the end Hermione takes up the cattle prod simply because it seems the least threatening - no blood, no lasting damage, just pain - and holds it tight in one hand as she turns back to Malfoy. "On your knees." He scrambles up immediately, and she slaps him in the face as hard as she can with an open palm. Her palm stings hot with the pain of the blow, and his head snaps to the side, cheek flaring red with the shape of her hand. His breath hisses in and his eyes flutter shut. She does it again. "Look at me!" she snarls, trying to play the part and feeling like she's failing. "Look at me you _fuck_." He opens his eyes and stares up at Hermione and she slaps him again, harder, her palm sore, and then grits her teeth and jams the cattle prod against the slight dip between pectoral muscle and shoulder.

He convulses - body stiffening, back arching, teeth slamming together with a loud clack and a _horrible_ sound of pain grinding out of his throat. He curls forward as his muscles spasm and tense, nearly falling, but she keeps holding the prod to him as she counts to five in her head and he continues to shudder and make that awful, quiet, animal sound. And then she pulls it back and he slumps and gasps, shivering for a moment, his chest heaving as he wrenches in sobbing breaths. He won't meet her eyes, his gaze fixed on the floor as he hugs himself and pants at the air, trembling like a leaf, biting his lip, nostrils flaring and eyes squeezing tight shut.

"I hate you," she says quietly, and real anger surges up in her for a moment - at him, at herself, at the Order, at Voldemort. At _everything_. "_I hate you so fucking much._" And then she electrocutes Malfoy again, in the same spot, where the prod has left tiny burn marks on his pale, smooth flesh. This time there are tears slipping down his cheeks when she finishes, and his gasps for air sound wobbly and wet, his lip bleeding where he's bitten through it. And then Hermione does it again. And again, and Malfoy screams and groans and by inches, slowly collapses to the ground, and Hermione would rather the world ended than that she had to do this a moment longer except she keeps doing it. Like an automaton, following the motions, shaking inside hard enough that she feels like she is going to fly apart. He still won't meet her eyes and she is simultaneously glad and furious about that - she doesn't want to see him look at her while she does this, but she _deserves_ to have to see it.

"Enough!" Voldemort snaps eventually, and the prod rips from Hermione's sweat-slick grasp. "You are boring me, mudblood. Do something else to your master." There is a pause, and Hermione stares at Malfoy twitching and gasping on the floor, involuntary sounds of pain torn jaggedly from him like a wounded animal, and she would give anything to be able to comfort him right now. "I know," Voldemort says then, wickedly pleased. "Use the Muggle flame device. Let us see how he stands the pain of burning flesh. Surely you will enjoy that, mudblood. Or are you simply that soft-hearted, creature? You cannot stand to hurt even him, who hurts you?"

"Y-you won't let him punish me for this, Lord?" Hermione stammers out like the pitiful creature Voldemort thinks she is, to cover for her hesitation. That she _is_. She wants to be sick, she wants to turn and run away, but she can't. Can't stop to think, can't let her horror get in the way - _just do it_. She has to play the role. So she does. "I - I want to. Want to. But…"

"Creature, I have already told him not to harm you for this. Do not be afraid," Voldemort tells her, in a voice that is gentle and kind and all the more hideous for it, and she bows repeatedly and mumbles thank you's, striding to the torture table and reaching blindly for the tiny blowtorch device.

Malfoy's flesh smells like roast pork when she burns him, only sickly sweeter, and horrifying. He screams. At first Hermione tries sitting on his chest to hold him still and keep him from trying to pull away involuntarily, her knees just barely keeping his arms pinned as she holds the torch against his stomach. But even though he is trying to be still, as per Voldemort's orders, he writhes enough to nearly unseat her. They are both coated in sweat, flesh on flesh barely dressed as she is, and he is sobbing pitifully, like a child, his eyes closed and tears seeping from under the lids. She wants to cry too.

Hermione has laid five deep, galleon-sized burns of scorched, crackled flesh into the soft skin of Malfoy's abdomen, and is beginning the sixth. Malfoy cries out in agony as he has with all of them – his throat raw now from the wordless cries and screams – and thrashes in the throes of the pain that he cannot contain anymore. He twists and bucks as the wounded, hoarse sounds keeps tearing from his throat, and Hermione slides and tumbles off him onto the hard stone, the torch burning a line across his thigh through his trousers and grazing her knee. His trousers catch fire, leaping up with flame, and Hermione's stomach slams down sickly, turned to lead as she keeps herself from crying out with fear with for him and slapping the fire out in panic. Instead she waits, staring wide-eyed and clutching her searingly painful knee until Malfoy slaps his trouser leg out, sobbing and whimpering. His face is wet with sweat and tears and snot, and the blood from his lip, run down his chin and along his jaw, down his neck, mixed with sweat to a pale pink.

His thigh is _burnt_. So badly, to her eyes at least. Edging toward third degree burns, but from his reaction, not badly burnt enough to kill the nerve endings, or he wouldn't be making those breathy, choking screams, or sobbing so hard. Hermione supposes that's probably a good thing, compared to the alternative of even more serious burns. It doesn't feel like a good thing. Although at this point she thinks she mostly feels numb inside, overloaded and burnt out by the horror. Her knee is searing, and if one little burn feels this bad, then how does Malfoy feel? This is worse than anything that he has ever done to her, and she _hates_ her helplessness, she hates that she is doing this.

He still won't look at her, his eyes swollen around from crying.

The whip comes next – her choice, not Voldemort's – and Hermione tries to make Malfoy kneel again, but although she manages to wrestle him to his knees he collapses to the ground face first, unable to keep upright. Hermione doubts he can even really comprehend what she is ordering him to do. He is lost in the agony. And then she takes the whip to him, hard and furious, shaking with horror and nausea because _when will this end?_ Please Merlin, please god, let it end _soon. _The blows split open the fresh scar tissue that criss-crosses Malfoy's back, and the blood trickles down thick and dark. His head twists back and forth as he shakes and tenses beneath the lashes, and the end of the whip snarls across his cheek halfway through and he screams.

Then the pliers, and he vomits by the time she gets to the second nail. He begs her to stop; gasping, pleading, moaning wretched and pitiful and Hermione feels trapped in a nightmare, in hell. "_Don't don't don't please don't please please please_," he begs her in a slurring moan, and then the words turn into anguished screams as she rips out a fourth nail. He stares up at her and he's gone behind the eyes; lost to the pain and the fear, and she hates herself as she closes the pliers over his fifth nail.

When his left hand is bereft of its nails, a bloody mess that he cradles to his chest, sobbing, Hermione finds she hasn't the stomach to go on to the next hand. She just...can't. She can't do anything more. Not another thing. Everything in her rebels at the thought.

So she drops the pliers to the ground, walks stiffly to the table and seizes up the silver truncheon, and then before she can think better of it - before she can think of the risks of permanent, perhaps fatal, harm - she swings it hard at the side of Malfoy's head. He goes down in a heap, and then a _cruciatus_ rips through Hermione, driving her to the ground as the truncheon falls from her nerveless fingers. Voldemort's voice cuts through the agony like a knife as she twitches on the floor, screams caught behind her teeth: "That will be enough, Mudblood. I want the boy to be _hurt_, not _dead_. _Wormtail_. Take it to young Draco's room and restrain it, so that it will pose no risk while he is unconscious. And lay a binding spell upon it as well, to prevent it from causing harm once it is free, just in case the boy is incapable of doing so properly when he awakes."

"Sh-should I have a healer attend Malfoy, My Lord?" Wormtail's cringing voice asks, as the _cruciatus_ stops, leaving behind the blissful absence of pain.

"No, don't bother. Let him have his slave see to him once he wakes. It seems...fitting, doesn't it?"

"Yes, _yes_, of course, My Lord, of _course_," Wormtail simpers, and then there is a sharp pain in Hermione's head and everything goes black.

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><p>When Hermione wakes, the first thing she is aware of is pain. A dull ache at her temples, and a stiff soreness in her muscles. Her wrists aching, her knee flaming with burning heat. The feel of the hard floorboards underneath her and her awkward position explain the sore muscles, and Hermione scrunches her forehead in groggy confusion. <em>What? Where...? Why is she...?<em>

Then the memories slam back violently, leaving her panting and horrified; Malfoy screaming as she hurt him. Malfoy begging her to stop. The smell of Malfoy's flesh burning. Malfoy's blood streaking her skin. She makes a weird, gargling sound of denial and tries to get up, only to find her awkward position and the ache in her wrists is because her hands are bound tightly behind her back, her fingers half numb. It takes her six attempts to shoulder up to her knees, and from there to her feet, swaying unsteadily and shaking her sweat-lank hair back from her face, looking around.

She's in Malfoy's room, of course - _thank Merlin_. And Malfoy is right there just metres away from her, sitting slumped forward at the table, his back to her. He is still shirtless, and his back is a coagulated painting of blood that Hermione put there. She feels suddenly cold, staring at him with wide eyes. She did that to him. She stumbles forward, nearly tripping and falling over her own feet, feeling awkward and clumsy in her own body. Her bare feet scuff on the floor when she almost loses her balance thanks to the way her hands are wrenched back, and Malfoy jerks his head up at the noise.

"Malfoy. It - it's just me." She rounds the table, coming into his line of sight, and he looks into her eyes, his own bloodshot, red rimmed, and swollen around.

"Granger," he rasps in a voice that sounds like tearing paper, reaching out for her with one hand and it's bruised and swollen nearly beyond recognition, weeping wounds left where his nails were and _oh god oh Merlin she did that._ Hermione turns and stumbles for the bathroom without a word, operating on autopilot. She drops to her knees in front of the toilet, the impact jarring her through and sending pain shooting through her burn, and nearly dunks her head in the toilet as she overbalances. But she doesn't really notice any of that, too consumed by her nauseated horror. She retches and retches, her empty stomach bringing up nothing but bile.

It takes Hermione a few moments to clamp down on the spasms that wrack her stomach, but in the time it takes, she also manages to calm the panicked workings of her mind a little. She still feels shocky and suffocated by guilt and horror, but Malfoy _needs_ her. He is severely injured and needs help, so _she_ needs to fucking pull herself together. Just then, she hears Malfoy weakly call her name, his voice raw and hoarse, and she flinches at the sound.

"Y-you aw righ?" he calls out thickly, easily audible because she didn't bother closing the bathroom door in her rush for the toilet, and she chokes down a sob. He shouldn't be worried about _her_. "Gr-Granger?" Hermione clamps her lips together hard, shoulders shaking as she struggles to hold in the wracking sobs that are trying to escape her.

"I - I'm fine, Malfoy," she says as soon as she can, but her voice still wobbles with emotion. "Can you just...hang on? Just a second. I'm coming." She manages to get a drawer open with her tightly bound hands and find a pair of good, sharp scissors, fumbling them up in her numbed fingers with great difficulty. "Get it together, Hermione," she tells herself harshly as she catches sight of herself the mirror, pale and stricken. Malfoy needs her to help him, to tend to his wounds, not to pointlessly beat herself up. So she leaves the safety of the bathroom to face the man she tortured.

She feels like a monster.

Malfoy sits slumped at the table still, head lolling forward a little, injured hand sitting on the tabletop - it looks gruesome, like a broken spider. Blood mats his hair at the left side of his head, where she'd hit him, and trickles sluggishly from his left ear. There is a deep wound on his right cheek, cutting up from his jaw where it is the deepest, and ending shallowly just beneath his eye. The lash from the whip, Hermione thinks, and wants to cry. The table hides the burns, but she knows they're there. Tears leak from her eyes as he looks up at her and tries to smile at her through the agony she knows he must be suffering.

"Malfoy. Malfoy, I'm so sorry. I'm _so fucking sorry_." She feels heartsick and disgusted with herself. She wants him to be angry at her, to hate her, but instead he just smiles and sighs with what sounds like relief, slurring:

"It's okay, Granger. It's gonna be okay."

"I _hurt_ you," she says in a cracked voice, wanting to reach out to him and touch him and soothe him and try to make it better. "It's _not_ okay." She turns her back to him, and shows him the scissors hooked up in her fingers. "Can - can you cut me free?" He takes the scissors in his uninjured right hand without a word, and begins clumsily working at the cord around her wrists. "Malfoy, I _tortured_ you. I did things... I - I _scarred_ you, I... It's not going to be okay because _I_ made you scream like that and I _hurt_ you and I can't take it _back_."

The bonds around Hermione's wrists go slack, and she manages to wriggle her hands free, before he turns her to face him. His unhurt fingers curl in her numb ones. Malfoy's eyes are bright grey irises in a sea of bloodshot red, puffy around his eyes, and so ashen he is nearly grey, the deep slash along his cheek and the blood from it, and his bitten lip and head wound, all conspiring to make him look like a stranger. He is painted in blood in his hair and down his neck, across his cheek and down his chin and jaw, into smears across the top of his chest.

"You did what you had to do," he answers calmly, in that scream-hoarse voice, and gestures toward the liquor cabinet with his uninjured hand. "Pour me a drink, Granger."

He drains three full tumblers of whiskey in under a minute, and then coughs weakly and gasps. "Shit that's good. Here." He places his wand on the table in front of her. "Can you cast? I - I don't think I can." Her hands are still clumsy but beginning to regain their feeling, stinging and buzzing with pain as sensation returns. Hermione thinks she can manage simple spells that don't require complex wandwork - she scoops up his wand and flicks it experimentally, hand screaming with sensation overload, and the candle at Malfoy's desk springs to flame.

"Yeah. I'll try." Some of the tension begins to gradually ease out of Malfoy as Hermione carefully applies multiple numbing charms to his wounds. His eyes are pain and whiskey-glazed, and he shivers a little - sweat at his brow, which feels burning hot to her touch. Hermione doesn't know if its the pain, or shock setting in, or both, or something else entirely. By the time she has applied numbing charms to all his wounds though - cringing with guilt at the sight of them - his shivering has eased a little though. "Can - would you mind if I change before I...?"

"Go for it, Granger," he says tiredly, rubbing the side of his unhurt hand over his forehead. He looks like a wreck, and despite the numbing charms, pain is still etched into his features. But Hermione can't stand being in this humiliating, restrictive, blood splattered costume a moment longer, and it'll only take her a moment to change.

"Thanks." Swiftly she unbuckles the collar around her throat, and cuts the laces to her corset with a sigh of mingled pain and relief. The lines of boning are bruised into her flesh, the fabric seams leaving indented red marks. She strips without a care, aware that Malfoy had averted his eyes when she'd shoved down her knickers - not that she would care if he hadn't. Heedless of the blood spatter on her skin, Hermione throws on the clothes she'd left in a heap on the bed before they'd gone down to see Voldemort, what feels like a lifetime ago; a soft tee-shirt and a pair of Malfoy's thin grey pyjama trousers magically altered to fit her. Her hands tremble nearly as badly as his are.

Hermione closes the wound at Malfoy's cheek first - getting the smallest wound out of the way while she steels herself to deal with the more severe ones. She manages well enough at sealing the flesh together - moving along the deep slash as it curves from just beneath his left ear, up across his cheek bone to directly beneath his left eye. It will definitely scar though, as rudimentary as Hermione's healing skill is, and she apologises mournfully, only for Malfoy to shrug it off without a word.

"Wh-what should I do next?" Hermione doesn't know what injury to deal with next now and Merlindamnit she doesn't want to cause him more pain, which the healing of anything _will_ do. She wishes she didn't have to do this. The thought makes her skin crawl.

"Leg first," Malfoy answers her through gritted teeth, breathless as he shifts sideways in his chair to reveal the raw, blistered skin on his thigh, and pours himself more whiskey with a shaky hand. Hermione flinches back and shuts her eyes, clamping a hand over her mouth as she sucks in a shocked breath. It looks dreadful. She forces her eyes open and stares at the burn miserably for a moment; _she_ is responsible for this. She is the one to blame for the burn that covers a third of the front of his thigh, cooked until black and raw.

"Oh my god, " she says into her hand and turns away until she can compose her features.

"It looks worse than it feels," Malfoy offers, his face shining with sweat and his lips grey as he tries to smirk. Hermione raises an eyebrow in disbelief.

"Really?"

"No." He coughs a weak laugh, and then hisses at the pain as he leans back and fumbles with his belt buckle. "Well, maybe a little. I think some of the nerves have died, or something." Hermione automatically moves to help, fumbling awkwardly with his belt without success, before giving up and using magic to cut down the side seams of his trousers. Thankfully, he is wearing shorts, rather than going without – Hermione can only take so much awkwardness and awfulness before she falls apart. The right trouser leg comes away easily, but the left doesn't want to separate from Malfoy's thigh. It is burnt into his flesh, adhering to it here and there around the edges of the wound, and Hermione doesn't want to just rip it away. She stares at the damage she wrought for a brief moment.

"I'm so sorry, Malfoy. And I don't - I don't say that because I want you to forgive me because you shouldn't." She sniffs and wipes at her nose, eyes full of tears, on the brink of crumbling to bits as her voice wobbles upwards and catches. "...I – I just can't believe I did that to you." Malfoy says nothing – his eyes are screwed tight shut and his face is twisted with pain, and Hermione stops flagellating herself over what can't be changed, and focuses on him. He needs her help, not her guilt. God she is a useless mess. "I'll just go get the medical supplies," she whispers hoarsely, sounding wet and nasal with her tears, and hurries for the bathroom.

They have a large jar of topical healing potion that Malfoy stole from a house he had taken part in raiding a short time ago, old clean cloths, and multiple rolls of soft, elastic bandaging. Hermione gathers it all up inside a large bowl and takes it back out to the main room, kneeling at Malfoy's side and laying down her supplies. The bowl she fills with water and chills until ice begins to creep over the surface, and dips a cloth into, laying it over his thigh so it gently soaks the trouser material adhering to Malfoy's wounds. His unhurt hand balls into a fist, and he tips his head back – tendons standing out stark on his neck, jaw clenched and eyes shut. "Belt," he gasps, and she swears inwardly and fumbles around for it, doubling it over and placing it in his mouth for him to bite down on. It seems to take forever to remove the last shreds of blackened cloth from the bubbled, weeping flesh, while Malfoy makes strangled noises of misery and tears seep from beneath his eyelids. Hermione doesn't know how he remains so still and stoic.

When Hermione splashes the wound with whiskey to disinfect it, he arches in the chair and screams, leg jerking uncontrollably and hand slamming down on the table, and she cringes back and hates herself.

Finally Hermione finishes the grim task, and after using a charm to clean her hands, carefully applies a thick coating of the cream to the burn, before winding soft bandages around Malfoy's thigh. After a while, his hand comes down and curls in her hair, and she pauses in her gentle binding, resting her forehead against his knee. She feels exhausted. A sigh shakes out of her chest, and his fingers stroke and curl through her hair, scratching gently over her scalp. "That feels better," he says soft and hoarse after plucking the belt clumsily from between his teeth, and it helps to hear that. She lifts her head and kisses his knee lightly, offering him a small, wobbly smile before taking a deep, steadying breath and beginning to wind the bandages around his wound again.

After Malfoy's leg, Hermione turns her attention to his back – his next worst wound. She hisses in a breath at the fresh slashes she'd torn through the still forming scar tissue. Livid scars have been ripped open again or bisected, and fresh, dark blood weeps sluggishly from the deepest wounds still. The only consolation is that the marks she has left aren't as deep as the others had been, for all that she had tried to be convincing. She hadn't been strong enough or experienced enough with the whip to cut _that_ deeply, thank Merlin. They're nasty wounds still, yes, but compared to what had already been done to his back it doesn't seem as terrible as it would otherwise, somehow.

"It's not as bad..." she says to him in a small voice, not certain whether she's trying to reassure him, or make herself feel better. Both, probably. "Not as deep."

"I know," he tells her quietly, and catches her hand with his uninjured one, squeezing it reassuringly, tangling their fingers together, and his is clammy and cold against hers. "Stop blaming yourself, Granger. I wanted you to do it. You know that."

"That's not the point. I can't _help_ it," Hermione says, and then shifts her grip on his hand and uses it to carefully help pull him to his feet. He leans heavily on her, unsteady and swaying, whimpering as they shuffle awkwardly side-by-side toward the bed. He is clammy with sweat, his right arm heavy and sweat-damp around her neck, and his breath rough on her cheek, scented with whiskey and the iron-tang of blood. "How do you stand it, Malfoy? How do you live with - with _hurting_...?"

"You get used to it," he says dully, ragged and choked with pain as they take one halting step after another. "After a while you just...get used to it. Not that it ever stops - _ah!_ - stops making you feel like a - _shit_ _fuck nggh _- a monster." Hermione doesn't know how Malfoy lives with the weight of it; with the guilt and the self-loathing. Suddenly the habit she suspects Malfoy had before she was captured, of drinking himself into a stupor every night, seems perfectly reasonable. "I'm sorry, Granger," he gets out, as he takes another limping, pain-filled step.

"Wh-why the fuck are you sorry, Malfoy? You didn't _do _anything._ I'm _the one who should be sorry."

"Because you're _not_ a monster, not like I am. He shouldn't have - you shouldn't have to feel like one. Because you're not," he gets out through grunts of pain as she helps him sit down on the edge of the bed, hunched forward so that his elbows rest on his knees, and his head lolls down.

"Neither are you," Hermione tells him firmly, and then she takes a deep breath and begins the long, arduous process of cleaning Malfoy's wounds.

He bites down on the doubled up leather belt that she remembers to slip between his teeth without a reminder now, and breathes in short, harsh pants, his uninjured hand shifting down to claw at the bedcovers as she gently sponges the drying blood from the wounds with the whiskey-saturated cloth. It takes longer and seems to hurt more than cleaning his thigh, and she ends up chewing the inside of her cheek bloody by the time she is done. She thinks that Malfoy would be at the point of crying out, only his throat is too raw, and he can't get enough breath. Instead, when she finally lays the bloodied cloth down with hands that shake like leaves in a storm, he is sobbing soundlessly, head twisted to the side to keep the wound on his cheek from being abraded.

"Too much," he grates out at one point toward the end, barely intelligible past the belt. "_Salazar_…can't take…any more." Hermione can see the pain etched into him; his face flushed now, and the tendons in his neck drawn taut, lips white where they aren't smudged with old blood, his eyes screwed shut, tears trickling from them slowly as he gasps for air through the belt and his gritted teeth.

"It's done," she says at last, and watches as a shudder runs through him, and the anticipation of agony leaves his face. Malfoy pushes the belt out of his mouth with his tongue as she undoes the magical binds, his eyes opening with a flutter. Hermione shifts from her position behind him on the bed, dumping the supplies on the bedside table, and Malfoy looks into her eyes - his own hazy, pupils mere pinpricks in the grey irises. His hand catches her shirt, and tugs her to stand between his knees, and she goes with his clumsy pull, smiling down at him with trembling lips, gently pushing his sweat-soaked hair off his forehead, and wiping the tears from beneath his eyes with her thumb.

"I'm sorry. I - I can't do that again," she gets out in a tiny, breathless voice, as her own tears start again, blurring in her eyes. "Please tell me he won't make me do that again. _Please_ tell me that we're - we're safe now."

"He probably won't. And - and we're probably safe. But...well..." he says in a cracked near-whisper, and she nods in understanding, because she knows that Voldemort is the last person she can expect to keep his word. They may have done what Voldemort had said was needed to ensure Hermione is...exclusively Malfoy's now, but that doesn't mean Voldemort won't change his mind in a fit of anger, or boredom. They'll never be safe as long as they're here.

"Yeah. I know," she says, pressing her lips together hard and trying to push down her tears. And Malfoy lets go of his fistful of her shirt, and slides his arm around her waist, tugging her even closer and resting his forehead between her breasts. Turning his head, and burying the unhurt side of his face against her, his breath hot on her skin through the thin material of the tee-shirt. She lets out a long, slow sigh, and strokes her fingers light through his damp hair for a moment, careful of the bloodied, matted patch where she'd struck him with the silver truncheon. Then she ducks her head awkwardly and kisses the top of his head. "Come on. I'd better bandage your back up now."

Bandaging his back is relatively easy; Hermione has had too much practice at wrapping the soft lengths of cloth around whip wounds, and while it's uncomfortable for Malfoy, it's not terribly painful. She takes care of the five coin-sized burn marks on his abdomen at the same time, cleaning and dressing them neatly. Malfoy stays seated at the edge of the bed while she sits behind him, dabbing the whip wounds carefully with the healing cream-potion they didn't have last time, and he says with a sigh that it soothes the pain in his wounds almost immediately. It's a slow process, winding the cloth around his lean torso, but Hermione is glad for that - it gives them both a moment to steel themselves for the final part. His hand.

"I can't believe I _did_ this." She holds his poor wounded hand in her two as she kneels upright on the floor before him, feeling sick to her stomach as she stares at the raw, weeping wounds where his fingernails had been. He is staring down too, splaying his fingers out, a nauseated kind of fascination on his face. In a way it's even worse than what she did to his thigh, because the severity and extent of the burn to his thigh was an accident – ripping out his fingernails was purposeful.

"Neither can I," he begins and it's like a slap in the face, guilt slamming into her with nauseating force.

"_I - I didn't know what to do,"_ she gasps in tearful apology through the sickness that cramps her stomach. "I'm _sorry_, Malfoy. I - I just...he told me to, I -"

"Hey. Hey, hey, _Granger_, hush. Hush." Malfoy's other hand comes up to cradle the angles of her face, thumb stroking gently over her tear-damp cheek. "I _know_. I know that. I didn't mean...I didn't mean to make you feel bad. I just really didn't think you had it in you." His eyes search over hers as his thumb keeps up its steady, gentle stroke. "I'm glad you _did_. You were _convincing_ and that was what you needed to be." Hermione is silent as she gets a clean, alcohol-soaked cloth ready by her side with one hand, the other still holding his wounded hand. "They'll grow back, Granger." He grins lopsidedly, and despite the awfulness of the situation, a pathetic, teary little giggle fizzes out of her.

"Thanks, Malfoy. But that really doesn't help me feel any better. I feel…awful." There is no word that can adequately describe how guilty she feels.

"I know. So do I." Malfoy grins again, trying to make light of the situation, and Hermione wonders how in the hell he's smiling through his pain and actually trying to reassure her. Why is he trying to make her feel better when it should be the other way around? She leans forward without thinking then, and kisses the corner of his mouth - slow and lingering, her lips warm, and his lips and cheek clammy and cool and so, so soft. Malfoy makes a quiet, rough sound and then turns his head, and his hand is in her hair and he's kissing her, gentle and thorough, tasting of whiskey and blood, and her stomach flip-flops and twists deliciously. And then all too soon he's pulling away and shaking his head weakly.

"Uh uh. Uh uh. No, we shouldn't - shouldn't be doing that," he says breathless, even as he leans unconsciously in toward her again, fingers playing in her hair and down the skin of her neck.

"Just a kiss," she says. _Pleads_. Her free hand finger-walks up his bare, unhurt thigh, before she scritches her nails back down over the pale, hair-smattered skin, and then splays her hand over the curve of his leg, squeezing firm. "Malfoy, please it's not taking advantage._ I want to_."

"N-n-o-_oh_ _fuck it_." And then he's kissing her again, hard and greedy, _demanding_, _taking_, and Hermione melts into him, savouring all of it. The way his hand has fisted in her hair to hold her to him, the rough scrape of his stubble, the soft fullness of his lips, the practiced, teasing touches of his tongue to hers... She's slick-wet and aching desperately between her legs with want, and she moans as Malfoy moves his damp, kiss-swollen mouth to her throat, licking and nipping at the sensitive flesh there. She shudders as his teeth close over her ear lobe, tongue playing, and her fingers twist and tighten involuntarily on his injured hand. Malfoy makes an awful, wounded sound and pulls back from her.

"_Shit_," he hisses in a pain-thick voice, jerking his hand away just as Hermione realises and drops it like a hot coal.

"Oh my god, oh _Merlin_, Malfoy, are you all right?" He's ashen and biting his lip hard, cradling his wounded hand in the other, but he manages a nod.

"Mmhm," he forces out, breathing hard and shallow, still ashen-grey. And then: "You just - just squeezed my - my thumb a bit. Hurt like _fuck_, but I'm - I'm all right, now." Her lust now well and truly quashed thanks to feeling sickened over hurting him again, Hermione snatches up the alcohol damp cloth, waving it in the air.

"I'm bloody well sorting out your hand _now_. It needs to be bandaged, for protection. I'm not risking bumping it again." Malfoy nods, holding it out to her, hissing and whining with the pain as she gingerly damps the wounds with the whiskey.

"We shouldn't have done that," he says, as she starts applying thick layers of cream-potion to the wounds, to keep the bandages from sticking and to help it heal. She looks up at him briefly - feeling stupidly rejected.

"Why? W-wasn't it good?" she asks pathetically, eyes casting over his face and coming to rest on his reddened mouth, just barely stifling the sound that threatens to escape her as she remembers viscerally the pleasure in that kiss.

"Salazar's sake, of _course_ it was - too fucking good. Too...I'm hurting like hell and I still just wanted to push you down and -" Malfoy stops himself before he goes any further, but it's already enough to make Hermione tingle and throb, picturing it in her mind with nervous excitement. "But we _can't do that_, for the same damn reasons as I told you before, Granger. The situation hasn't changed. I just had a...moment of weakness."

"It's _not_ taking advantage," she insists, like a child, and Malfoy makes an exhausted, pleading sound of disagreement and shakes his head.

"I - I can't - ...can we talk about this later?" he asks her with a hint of beseeching and impatience in his hoarse-rough voice. "I can't _think_ straight right now, it hurts so much, and..."

"Yes. Yes, of course. Jesus. You're hurt and I'm - I'm a terrible person. I'm so sorry." Hermione turns her attention abruptly back to his hand and resumes carefully applying the cream, stifling the maelstrom of feelings that kept trying to escape. Now is not the time. Hermione knows Malfoy is quite correct that now is not the time to delve into the issues hanging between them, and she knows that he's certainly _trying _to do the right thing by insisting they not do anything, but _Merlin_, it is _infuriating_. She wants him. But Malfoy is on the brink, not thinking clearly and wracked with pain and in her mind, _she_ would be the one taking advantage of _him_ if she were to push the issue right now. So she reins her inappropriate feelings in sharply.

"Don't be sorry, Granger." Malfoy's unhurt fingers curl in the ends of her hair, where it hangs forward over her cheek, tugging gently. "You didn't do anything wrong. I just - I don't want to be doing things that we can't take back right now. I'm hurting and I'm pretty sure I'm a little drunk, so..."

"No kissing," she finishes for him, as she wraps the first bit of gauze around his thumb, swaddling it carefully, and he makes a humming sound of assent, and smiles at her, and she tries to smile back, feeling warmth well up alongside her guilt and her strain. And then there is silence for a while, punctuated now and then by hisses of pain, and quiet apologies.

* * *

><p>Hopefully the next chapter will be done soon - leave a review to feed the muse :)<p> 


	9. Part Nine

**Part Nine**

Hermione groans, staring at herself on the mirror for a moment as she pushes her sweat damp hair off her forehead with her wrist. She looks like hell. She fills up a tumbler of water at the bathroom tap, and then wets her hand beneath the flow, swiping her palm over her face. The cool wetness wakes her up a little, but doesn't help her feel any better. It's four am, three nights after the day that Voldemort made her torture Malfoy, and she hasn't slept more than a couple of hours in the time since.

His hand bothers him badly, and the whip wounds on top of only half-healed injuries made it so much worse than the first whipping. And as well as that, he seems to have suffered a concussion from her blow to the head that has caused near-constant headaches and nausea, and the burn to his leg has gotten infected. So there has been pain. So, so much pain. Hermione has spent hours sitting and gnawing the inside of her cheek raw as she holds Malfoy's uninjured hand and soothes him, guilt sliding under her skin like needles and blood metallic in her mouth.

The numbing charms can't do enough to dull the pain - she still can't manage full strength charms with Malfoy's wand - and Malfoy has no access to pain potions, so he's not been near comfortable enough to manage any proper, deep sleep. He has a cabinet full of dreamless sleep potions, but while they help make one drowsy and keep nightmares from troubling one's sleep, they can't _make_ someone go to sleep when they're trying hard not to scream and cry from the constant agony.

So Malfoy has been in pain and trapped in a semi-conscious wakefulness for over four days - delirious more often than not, and unable to keep down any food more challenging than broth. Unfortunately, none of those things are conducive to healing, and so he hasn't been doing as well as Hermione had hoped. His recovery is glacial, and it feels like rather like their roles have flipped entirely. Hermione was the one to hurt _him_. _He_ is the weak one. _She_ has to take care of him. She is the monster and he is the victim, and any lingering fear she had of him is gone now, erased from existence by what has transpired.

It makes her feel even guiltier to think it, but she can't help thinking to herself that Voldemort's plan backfired terribly; instead of making Malfoy hate her, hurting him has only served to make her feel in control again. Stronger. Less cringing and shattered, and more capable. Because he needs her to be. He needs her to be there for him, to care for him, because he can't care for himself right now. It's not easy to overcome the urge to hide in the corner and block out the frightening, overwhelming situation. But she tries. And fails and succeeds in the same day - sometimes in the same hour.

She does her best, but it's hard to go on without Malfoy there - strong and stoic - to anchor her, as he has been since she was first captured. He has been a steady rock, an anchor, a constant - not always able to protect her, or comfort her, or even make anything better, but _there _at least, always ready to do what was necessary to keep her alive, and as whole as he could manage. And now he's not. Now he's weak and wounded, and entirely dependent on her, and it's _terrifying_. But she does what she has to; cleans his wounds and changes the bandages, assists him to the bathroom, helps feed him the broth the house elfs bring, hovers over him attentively every minute...

"Here." Hermione touches his shoulder and Malfoy cracks dazed eyes open, emerging from the restless, pain-filled stupor he keeps sinking into. Not true rest, nor true consciousness. His lips are dry and cracked, and his eyes are dull as he lies on his wounded back, half-propped up by pillows. Hermione wishes like hell he'd just fucking well _eat_. She wishes she had proper pain killers for him. He needs nutritious food and good rest in order to heal, and he's not getting enough of either - he can't hold down one and she can't get the other. It's fraying her already precarious mental state with frustration.

"Malfoy?" She holds out the cup of water and he attempts a smile and reaches up, wrapping his fingers around hers and guiding the cup to his lips. He drains it in a matter of seconds, throat bobbing as he swallows.

"Thanks," he whisper-mumbles, and then his eyes slide shut again. Hermione sighs and crawls onto the bed, curling into Malfoy's side. He lifts his arm with a wince and wraps it around her, and she snuggles closer and lets out a soft, weary sigh, head pillowed on his shoulder as she slides her hand to rest on the hollow of his stomach. She wants desperately to feed him chocolate and fried things and complex carbohydrates to fatten him up; to make him sleek and lean again instead of swiftly tipping toward skin and bone.

It hurts, to see him like this and know that she is the one responsible. It doesn't matter that Voldemort was the one who forced it to be like this - she was still the instrument of his destruction, and it was her hands, not Voldemort's, that left Malfoy terribly wounded.

"I'm so tired," she says aloud, and Malfoy tangles his unhurt fingers in her hair, gentling them through her wild locks. His concave abdomen rises and falls beneath her palm, and his breath is a warm whisper of air on her forehead.

"Sleep, then," he murmurs, voice cracking and thin, barely audible.

"You'll need me," Hermione protests through a yawn, struggling to keep her eyes open. She just wants to _stop_ for a while. She just wants to _rest_. She wants to go home, to be in an Order safe-house with Harry and Ron and the other Weasleys and...and _Malfoy_. She wants to get out of here, she wants to be safe, but if Malfoy's not there, the prospect is oddly...unsettling. Wrong. Unacceptable. She can't. The realisation - _I _can't_ leave him_ - feels less like a shock, and more like a puzzle piece sliding into place. If she ever gets out of here, she needs it to be with Malfoy, not leaving him behind here, in this awful place, without her. Anything else is not just an unpleasant thought, but utterly unacceptable.

"I'm feeling better today," he says, and his voice is a slurred rasp that makes his words sound like a lie. But he's acting coherent and lucid at least, which is a definite improvement. "It's hurting less. I think I might be able to sleep myself," he tells her, fingers still sifting gently through her tangled hair. "Rest, Granger. I'll wake you if I need you."

Hermione doesn't mean to fall asleep, but between the warmth of them curled together beneath the bedding, his steady draws of breath, and the mesmerising touch of his fingers to her hair, she slides inexorably toward it. One moment she is forcing her heavy eyes to stay open, trying to figure out when she'll need to renew his numbing charms, and the next minute she is blinking sleepily awake; forehead pressed to the smooth skin of his side, a blissful warmth and sense of wellness suffusing her.

"Malfoy?" Urgent worry chases away the dozy bliss, but then a hand squeezes her shoulder.

"I'm fine, Granger." His voice, rough but calm. "Go back to sleep."

* * *

><p>A letter arrives from Malfoy's mother five days after the - after Voldemort - after Hermione was forced to hurt him. It seems short, and Malfoy's mouth tightens when he reads it sitting up in bed, strain etching into his face. Hermione watches from her curl in the armchair in the sun, where she's been reading an old textbook on Healing charms the house elf procured at Malfoy's request. Thank Merlin the house elf is loyal to Malfoy and bound by a confidentiality charm - although even its loyalty has limits; it can't go against any orders that come from Voldemort. Obviously.<p>

Voldemort doesn't seem to have anything against Draco wanting Healing textbooks though, or letters from Narcissa Malfoy.

"You're interested? Well then: Dear Draco," Malfoy says aloud suddenly, with a hint of sharpness, and Hermione flushes at being caught staring, chastised. It's none of her business what Malfoy's mother says to him.

"Sorry." She looks away, out the window, chewing on her lip, embarrassed at having been caught. He huffs a weak laugh and shakes his head, waving off her embarrassment, a little apologetic for his own tone.

"No, really, it's fine, Granger. It simply says - _Dear Draco. I was concerned to hear you were injured in the Dark Lord's service; please be more careful, my darling. Your father and I send our best wishes, and hope you recover quickly. We had hoped to return home soon, but it seems your father's business here will not be concluded for some time yet. Your Mother._"

He sighs and tosses the scroll to the bed, dragging his hand through his hair, and Hermione chews her lip again, feeling awkward. She has never read a letter quite _that_ cool in tone or stilted before - well, certainly not from someone's own mother at least. Malfoy seems bitter, and she doesn't know what to say. Should she comfort him?

"Do...do you want a quill and parchment, to write back?" She gestures toward the desk tentatively, and he hesitates a moment before shaking his head shortly.

"No. No, thank you, Granger." And that was that; topic closed and his face carved in unfeeling stone. Hermione remembered how much he'd worshiped his father at school, how much he'd clearly cared for his mother, and she feels sorrow for him, welling up.

* * *

><p>"<em>Malfoy!<em>" Hermione whispers, finding his arm in the dim light of the shuttered lamp that sits on the bedside table - out of her reach, along with Malfoy's wand - and squeezing his wrist firmly. "Malfoy, wake up. It's okay. Just…wake up. Malfoy! _Wake. Up_. Merlin-damnit, _please,_ wake up."

There have been several nights where Hermione has needed to awaken Malfoy from nightmares since…the _incident_, because once Malfoy was lucid enough to do so, he began to refuse the Dreamless Sleep potion. He says that it makes him feel _wrong_, but Hermione thinks he's being an idiot and a masochist, and has told him so in no uncertain terms. Not that her telling him so has swayed him on the matter. He is as stubborn as her, a fact she doesn't entirely dislike, until times like _this_.

"Malfoy, fucking wake _up!_"

Malfoy's nightmares are _normally_ easy to deal with. He has a pattern; he begins making distressed sounds in his sleep and shifting restlessly, and with the way they sleep beside each other and the fact that Hermione is a light sleeper these days, his restlessness is enough to wake her.

She usually scrambles up bleary-eyed and kneels beside him in the dim light of a _lumos_, speaking to him in comforting, low whispers as she touches him gently. Warm caresses to his bare chest and arms and stubble-roughened cheeks, as she tells him that it's all right, that he needs to wake up, that he's safe, that it's not real. And inevitably he does settle, and wake - blinking wet grey eyes up at her, nightmare-confusion fading, replaced by something else entirely as he stares up at her, and says her first name soft and rough at once. The sound of _Hermione_ all needy and shocked on his lips is unimaginably alien but delicious, and makes her stomach flip and her skin go hot.

But this one tonight is not the normal, Hermione thinks with an edge of panic and frustration, as she lies on her side and murmurs urgently in Malfoy's ear, trying to wake him up as her pulse races and sweat springs up clammy on her skin, growing more frantic for him to wake. It has been eight nights since the - the _incident_, and Hermione had been exhausted enough, and plagued by enough unpleasant dreams herself, that _she_ had taken the Dreamless Sleep…and slept more heavily than usual.

Which is why, she hazards to guess, she has woken up to Malfoy making wounded sounds in his sleep, tears glistening on his cheeks, as he lies atop her Merlin-damned arm. He has rolled onto his back in his restlessness without it waking her - until he trapped her arm, whereupon she came blearily out of sleep to _this _mess. The pain of her stupid, bony arm putting pressure on the whip wounds must be excruciating for him - but somehow it hasn't woken him, only driven him deeper into nightmare.

The situation is made more difficult by the fact that waking him abruptly leaves him disorientated and panicky, with the nightmare caught horror-vivid in his mind. The one time she did it - the first time he'd suffered a bad nightmare - he'd had a panic attack after, sitting hunched over in the bed, tears streaking his cheeks even though he wasn't really crying, wheezing and gasping as he'd tried to draw breath and felt unable to. It had lasted nearly an hour and been _awful_, and neither of them had slept again that night. But then Hermione thinks she feels a splotch of dampness on her forearm, seeping through the bandages Malfoy's back is swathed in, and she doesn't see that she has a choice.

"_Malfoy!_" She is loud this time, and pats his upper arm hard, figuratively crossing her fingers and desperately hoping he won't react badly. His eyes are screwed tightly shut, and his face is scrunched with pain and distress as he makes frightened, awful whimpers, and pained groans, crying out now and then. He speaks sometimes during his nightmares, usually pleading -'please don't make me, please, don't' - with a miserable despair that's heart-breaking. Tonight whatever words he says are indecipherable mumbles, but the distress on his face is clear enough. It's _bad_.

"Malfoy! Wake up!" She shakes him by one shoulder with her free arm; he makes a pained noise but doesn't wake.

"Draco!" she cries loudly then, right by his ear, and feeling stupidly guilty for it, pinches the naked flesh of his side. Hard. Malfoy makes a funny, juddering gasp and then jerks upright with a choked groan of pain as the sudden movement hurts his back. His eyes are blank - wide and wild - and his shoulders and chest are heaving as he drags for air. He huddles forward, making wounded, horrible noises as his injuries no doubt scream from the sudden wrenching movements, trying to smother the sounds with a hand pressed to his mouth.

"It's okay," Hermione tells him helplessly, going to her knees beside him and laying a hand on his shoulder, fingers stroking and curling. He doesn't show any indication he even heard her, and so she slides her fingertips up the side of his neck, fingers sliding and tangling through his fine, white-blond hair, trying to soothe him. "It's all right, Malfoy. It was a nightmare. Only a nightmare." And she wraps an arm around him, one hand still on his hair, joined by her lips as she presses them to the crown of his head, enveloping him in the comfort of her warmth. "We're all right," she murmurs over and over, breath ruffling his hair, and his breath judders in and out, catching as her words finally start to sink in.

"I - I -" he begins, and can't continue, and Hermione says _I know_, and holds him tighter, mindful of his injuries, and he turns his face toward her - resting his forehead on the jut of her collarbone as she cradles him close, there on her knees. Malfoy's tears drip down over her skin, as his uninjured hand comes up to grip her wrist and cling to her, still lost in the daze of sleep and pain, and if his nightmares are anything like hers, vivid memories of all the hurts they've inflicted on each other.

"You're safe now," she tells him through a throat that feels tight and clogged, just like he has tried to tell her so many times, and unlike _her_, she thinks he believes her choked whisper.

He doesn't seem to remember it, when he wakes.

* * *

><p>"Stop feeling guilty," Malfoy tells her calmly but firmly one afternoon, thirteen days after it had happened, and Hermione freezes in tending to his burn, her potion-coated hand hovering just above it. <em>How is she supposed to stop feeling guilty?<em> She wants to yell that at him, but it wouldn't be fair, so she bites her tongue instead, literally. It stings and feels raw and fat in her mouth, although she draws no blood.

She takes a breath, and then slides her hand carefully over the burn scars, feeling for the heat of infection as she slathers on the potion. She does it looking up from where she kneels at his feet, watching as his features subtly shift and rearrange in shape - struggling to bear the pain. His jaw tightens and his eyes flutter shut for a moment, his hands make fists in the bedding, and his thigh tenses like iron beneath her palm. She swallows hard, feeling sick.

"You can't ask me to stop feeling guilty when you haven't even _healed_, Malfoy," she says, carefully spreading the topical potion out over the edges of the burn, watching the fine blond hairs on his thigh slick down. It's intimate, kneeling here like this with Malfoy in nothing but his shorts and too much bandaging, with her hands pressing against his warm skin. He could do this himself now - of course he could - but neither of them have mentioned that.

Sometimes Malfoy pushes a disobedient bit of hair back off her face, and then ends up idly playing with her hair, carding his fingers through the tangles. Sometimes - _always_ - she touches the uninjured skin of his thigh far more than she needs to, marveling at how warm and soft it feels under her fingertips. She thinks the burn scars will fade away to nothing even if he doesn't get specialised treatment; it's not severe enough to scar permanently, thank Merlin. Unlike his back. His poor back, which had been perfect, smooth marble until Voldemort and she had laid waste to it - ruined it, mangled it. Hermione still thinks it's beautiful - perhaps even more so in a twisted sort of way, because he received those scars to protect her - but she is well aware it is only _she_ who would find them beautiful and not a mutilation.

"It's not your fault," he says, nudging her softly in the side with the knee of his unhurt leg. "Don't be stupid, Granger. You didn't have a choice. And I'm getting better." She huffs a derisive sound. None of that makes a difference in how she feels. It doesn't change the fact that she _hurt_ him. And he shouldn't give her advice that he can't bloody well follow himself.

"Do _you_ feel guilty? For - for what you've done to...me?" she asks him pointedly if haltingly, flushing hot because bringing that up is _hard_, and awful. She tries to just not think about it usually, because all it does is make her feel sick and horrible and dirty, and it doesn't achieve anything. Malfoy goes ashen white, and his eyes flutter briefly shut as he tries to compose himself. He looks as though she's struck him, and she feels no sympathy. This is reality, and he needs to learn to accept it.

"It's...it's different, Granger." His voice is thick and strained and guilt ridden. Hermione lays a large rectangle of gauze over the burn, smoothing it gently down. She can feel the discomfort humming under his skin as she takes every opportunity to touch him while she winds bandaging over and around the gauze. He's uncomfortable with her kindness, with her care. He recoils from the fact that the thought of him makes her feel safe, he refuses to accept that she could care about him, could want him even. To be fair, she finds it strange as well - but unlike him, she doesn't attribute it all to Stockholm Syndrome. She thinks perhaps there is an element of that involved...but at this point, she doesn't particularly care.

"I'm not sure that it is, actually." Because it's not, not at all. They are both prisoners here, they both of them have been forced to do things against their will, they have been hurt, and forced to hurt, and neither of them should feel guilty. But they still will. No one who has a conscience could hurt others and not feel a sick, gnawing guilt over it.

* * *

><p>They have Muggle Thai food for dinner to celebrate, the day Malfoy manages to make it to the bathroom and back without needing help, or to stop and lean against the bathroom door-frame to rest. Thai is his choice, thanks to her descriptions of the food. They eat it in bed while Hermione tries to explain the concept of Muggle movies at Malfoy's pleading, and in the end he's more bewildered than before. 'Moving pictures' are an ironically hard concept to explain to magical folk, and the mechanisms of the film industry are mind boggling to him. But it's nice to smile and relax and talk about something silly, and fun, and interesting.<p>

He asks her about what it was like growing up as a Muggle, and what she'd thought of Diagon Alley the first time she'd seen it, and what she dreamed of being growing up, and how cars worked, and what she'd wanted to be when she grew up before she'd known she was a witch, and where she went for holidays, and what flying in a plane is like... Malfoy is all questions, and he listens with interest, prodding for details with lighter topics, and respecting any shorter answers with things that are more personal. She entertains him as best she can, trying to sustain his cheerful mood by relating Muggle jokes that she's sure she botches terribly, and explaining Muggle technology, and idiosyncrasies, and traditions.

It's for him that she does it, but they both laugh a lot.

Hermione thinks later that she had nearly forgotten how to.

She thinks, when she remembers it the next day while tending the healing whip wounds and changing his bandages, that perhaps the evening had been just as much for her sake as his, and on impulse she lays a kiss at the base of his neck. He makes a startled sound but says nothing discouraging, so she does it again, and his head drops and he whispers her name, pleading and sad, and she doesn't think she should do it again, even if he does reach awkwardly around afterwards to squeeze her knee in a gesture of clumsy intimacy.

* * *

><p>It's almost three long weeks before Malfoy is up and about properly again - his fingernails beginning to grow back, the scar on his face a thin, livid mark, and the debilitating headaches from his concussion finally gone. His back is an utter wreckage, but as Malfoy says dismissively, the new injuries really aren't noticeable what with all the older ones, and as he can't see either unless he looks in the mirror, he doesn't care. She doesn't at all believe his bravado; she knows the way it looks troubles him. She doesn't mention that though - if he wants to keep that feeling a secret, well, she can understand that.<p>

Besides the look of his scars, Malfoy moves with the stiffness of an old man, and he's lost a great deal of weight that he could ill afford to lose. His once lean frame is now bony and angular nearly to the point of emaciation, and Hermione finds herself constantly fussing quietly over him, trying to make sure he eats properly and for the most part, failing.

Malfoy resumes his duties in Voldemort's service despite his lingering issues, and slowly the days return to normal. And the crushing fear Hermione has felt since she first awoke in the dungeons retreats just the tiniest bit, because in the eyes of the Death Eaters, Hermione is Malfoy's now, and his alone. For now, they'll be okay. The worst is over. No one can hurt her. Hermione has to believe that.

* * *

><p>"He's talking about going to America," Malfoy says randomly, as he emerges from the bathroom in pyjama trousers, his hair damp and spiky from toweling. Hermione looks up from the few medical supplies she has laid out on the bedside table, and winces as Malfoy's back is exposed to her as he yanks a tee-shirt out of a drawer. Even the deepest slashes are scabbed well over now, but even the vivid scar tissue of the lesser the whip strokes, which have lost their scabbing, still look horribly painful. Happily, Malfoy has able to access pain potions over the past few days, so at least Hermione knows it's not hurting him anymore.<p>

"The - the Dark Lord?" she asks, adding: "Don't put that on. Come here." There's a note of casual command to her voice, and Malfoy raises an eyebrow inquiringly but does as she says, moving around the bed with his shirt in hand. They have grown comfortable around one another again, during his long recuperation. Hermione isn't scared any longer - she treats him, she realises, almost like she treats Harry and Ron. _Treated_ Harry and Ron. She bosses him about, and fusses over him.

"Yeah. It won't be happening just yet, but very soon," Malfoy says, sitting obediently on the edge of the bed, and Hermione settles behind him comfortably, and begins tending to his back. She's quiet for a long time before she speaks, thinking about hope and escape and home.

"It might be a chance then. Yeah?"

"Yeah." The hope hangs between them, taut and fragile, and silence falls as Hermione cleans and closes any re-opened, weeping wounds, and begins applying the healing cream. She's easy with him and downright bossy when it comes to matters of his health, and Hermione thinks that the dynamics between them have always been changeable, but they've shifted _again_ over the past several weeks. Hermione is no longer afraid of Malfoy, no longer doubts him even a little; they have reached a certain sense of equality between them. The fact that he was forced to - to rape her, all those weeks ago, no longer makes her feel violated by _Malfoy, _but by Voldemort, the one who ordered it, the one who made Malfoy do it, the one who is to blame.

The thought of doing anything too intimate with Malfoy still makes her feel...scared and ill though, because even if it's not Malfoy's fault it still _happened_. The sense of violation, humiliation, helplessness...it's still all bound up with him doing those kinds of things. And besides that, he's still stupidly, stubbornly insistent that they shouldn't. He tells her that she can't properly, freely consent, he tells her that she won't want to once she leaves, that he doesn't want to take advantage, that he doesn't want to do anything she'll regret.

It has taken Hermione a stupidly long time to realise that Malfoy is just as afraid as she is. Not just because of the physical aspects, and the awful associations that certain acts have for them, but because he's afraid of the emotional consequences. She thinks that for Malfoy, sex would be like admitting their feelings out loud, and he's not willing to do that, to open himself to that hurt and that vulnerability. Which is enormously stupid of Malfoy, because refusing to acknowledge and act on his feelings doesn't protect him from suffering that hurt and vulnerability anyway. Idiot.

But Hermione's perfectly all right with not taking their intimacy any further, so she doesn't complain. What they have is quite enough. She sweeps the pads of her lotion-slick thumbs firmly along Malfoy's shoulders, and then glides her palms very gently down over his shoulder blades. The topical potion slicks her way in gliding over the uneven, ridged scars, and Malfoy sighs at her touch. She keeps it light enough not to hurt his still scabbed-over wounds, and her touch is meant more for comfort than for healing if she is honest. But then comfort can be healing, she argues to herself with a tiny smile, as he sighs again and leans back into her touch a little more.

While her hands run over his scarred, marked skin, her mind keeps ticking over though, and a worry worms its way into her mind.

"If - if _He_ goes. Will you come with me?" Hermione asks, hands stilling for a moment, breath held caught in her throat with anticipation. The dread in the pit of her stomach makes her think she already knows the answer. Malfoy is silent for a moment too long.

"I can't," he says at least, dull and lifeless. "I have to - I have to stay. Those are my orders." There is no emotion or inflection in his voice - he is an automaton, but that the planes of muscle in his back go stiff beneath Hermione's hands. She bites her lip, and then shifts awkwardly around so that she is almost beside him, trying not to touch anything with her greasy hands.

"But...what will you tell him about me? Won't they realise, when I disappear, that you're a traitor?" She fixes her eyes to his as he turns his head toward her, his face pale and grave, and utterly expressionless.

"No. Not necessarily. Voldemort said that you are mine, to do with as I wish. I..." He looks away, down at his left hand, examining the almost regrown nails as he keeps speaking in a monotone. "I will obtain a body from the dungeons, mutilate it, skin it, and act as though I couldn't get over you hurting me, and killed you in a fit of rage."

"Oh..." Hermione swallows hard, picturing him doing just that as he explains it to her; vivid in her mind's eye. The fiction is...disturbingly convincing. That was no guarantee though. "But what if they don't?"

Malfoy meets her worried gaze again, his own totally calm. "Then I suppose I die." Anger sweeps her, and bursts out without thought or measure, tears welling and overflowing in her eyes.

"No. _No_. You can't just... Whatever help you give the Order isn't worth... You've done _enough_, Malfoy. You've sacrificed _enough_. They can't make you...no one would blame you..." Hermione trails off helplessly, _begging_ him to listen to reason. He couldn't stay here. Killing her might make a convincing fiction, but not half as convincing as he needed to be, after all his odd behaviour since acquiring her as a slave. Voldemort was not stupid. If he put thought into it and investigated beyond a simple acceptance of Malfoy's word, he would be bound to discover the truth, and what happened to Malfoy once he did... Hermione shuddered to think. "Please, Malfoy. You can't _stay_. It's madness to think..."

Malfoy looked at her, his jaw tight and his hands making fists, his features still blank, but drawn now - weary and strained despite himself.

"It doesn't concern you, Granger. Why do you care?" he asks her through lips that seem numb, the words dispassionate but nearly slurred at the edges, and his grey eyes are as shiny and flat as sickles. "What is it to you?" And _there_ is some emotion - the slightest hint of disdain for her. It's like a slap to the face. Hermione falls back from him, forgetting her greasy hands on the bed-covers as she shoves herself to her feet, her pulse a thundering stampede, and her chest constricting hard, angry and hurt seizing her roughly.

Hermione stares at Malfoy, as he sits perched statue still on the edge of the bed, staring at her expressionlessly - bare chested and painfully skinny, eyes shuttered and mouth a thin line.

"_Why do I care?_" she echoes, filled with hurt and disgust, and then echoes him again - angrier this time and just as hurt. "_What is it to __me?_" The tears prick behind her eyes like needles, and she wants to throw something at him in fury, because he should _know_ that he means something to her, and she's sure he _does._ "You _know_, you _bastard_. You know what you - you _know_ what you mean to me. You know that I -" Hermione snaps her mouth shut then, slamming a hand over it, cheeks blazing suddenly hot because he doesn't know that. Not _that_. At least, he _didn't_ - but she sees the flicker of something in Malfoy eyes as she stops herself - the slight drop of his jaw, and the spasmodic clenching of his fist, the horror of suspicion taking subtle shape on his face.

"Take care of your own fucking back, you _stupid _fucking_ bastard_," she snarls, in a pitiful attempt to cover her near slip, snatching up a roll of bandaging from the bedside table, and throwing it at him. It hits his shoulder and bounces off onto the floor, as he stares at her, his chest rising and falling raggedly with his breaths, and when he speaks it sounds like he has been running for miles.

"I don't know a Merlin-damned thing, Granger," he says, dazedly. "And neither do you."

"I -" she begins, and he stands then, smooth and graceful despite a wince, stepping in so close to her that she has to crane her head back to meet his eyes, and can feel the heat rushing off him. He feels dangerous and she falls silent.

"When we get the chance, Granger, _you_ are going, and _I _am not, and that is fucking final, do you understand me?" He stares down at her implacably, waiting - grabbing her arm when she began to turn away, and repeating the question, the words grating out of his mouth, furious and cold. "_Do. you. understand. me?_" His bony fingers dig bruising hard into her skin, and she can see in his face that he knows exactly how much it is hurting her. Her chin trembles despite herself and tears spill over and down her cheeks, and that old snake of fear that has slept in her belly undisturbed for so long lifts its head, reminding her in little jabs and shivers of what he has done to her.

"Yes," she whispers, gaze falling to the floor, to stare at their feet on the rug, her tears slithering down over her skin to plop by her biggest toe, and he drops her arm immediately and turns away, snatching up his shirt off the bed, and his wand off the bedside table.

"I'm going out," he says, oddly strained, not looking at her, as she stands there stunned and scared. "Don't wait up for me."


	10. Part Ten

**A/N: **Thank you so much everyone, for all the reviews! They're an amazing motivator, and I really appreciate them! Also, I've recently edited and cleaned up The Risk-Reward Ratio on this site, and, if you'd like a pdf of any of my finished fics please let me know in a review or PM :)

Only one more chapter and an epilogue to come after this.

* * *

><p><strong>Part Ten<strong>

It's been over three months now since Hermione was first captured - the seasons have changed, and the lingering mild autumn sun has given way to winter proper now - snow fell for the first time, tonight. A thin covering that makes everything white and soft and beautiful. And because she asked as soon as he got in the door after a late night doing god knows what at a revel, Malfoy has taken Hermione down into the garden - in the middle of the night when everything is silent, and their boots crunch over the snow-blanketed ground, and she huddles close to him within her warm cloak and the jersey of his that she nicked from his drawers. He wraps his arm around her, keeping her close to his side, and the moon hangs bright in the sky, and she wants to kiss him, always.

But since her near admission to him almost a week ago, Hermione is simply lucky to have him hold her close like this. After giving her a sincere apology for his behaviour, he has been skittish and distant, avoiding contact with her as much as possible - sleeping back in his corner bed again, and no longer allowing her to tend to his wounds. She knows what is going on, now that that initial shock of his reaction has faded from her. He is trying to push her away in anticipation of their separation. It's not that he doesn't care, it's that he _does_. He's trying to cut the ties their shared horror has bound between them so that it hurts less when she is safe and he is not, and she _hates_ it even as she knows there's nothing she can do to stop him.

So when they go down into the garden, Hermione pretends to be cold but waves off a warming charm - pressing close to him instead with pleading eyes. And as she knew he would, Malfoy relents with what seems like relief, and holds her much closer than she needs to be held for mere warmth. It makes her feel good, and safe, to be tucked up against him like this, soaking in the faint scent of his aftershave, and the wiry strength in his arm. She smiles to herself as they meander toward the maze, and leans her head against his shoulder. He smells good all over, fresh from a bath after his night's work. But those thoughts are bad, so she turns her mind firmly to the good.

"It's pretty tonight," she says softly, as they approach the snow-capped hedges of the maze, and he grunts a non-committal response, mind clearly elsewhere. "It's a full moon."

"Mm," is all he says in answer, as the hedging closes around them, everything dusted white like icing sugar atop a cake, and Hermione wonders despite herself what it is that weighs so heavy on him, tonight. She can't help wondering what he saw, at the revel. What he _did_. Has he ever…done to someone else what he did to her? She can't ask him those questions though. She can never ask him those questions. Instead she tries to blot them out, to think of anything but that. She lifts her eyes to watch him as they wander deeper into the maze - his face in profile. Malfoy has a woollen hat on that covers his ears and a thick scarf, the tip of his nose and his cheeks ruddy with cold, his features clear and calm with grave composure, and then his tongue darts out over his full lips, and warmth trickles through her at the sight and suddenly it is not so hard to think of good things.

"Do you know what Muggles say about the full moon?" Hermione asks, feeling wild and reckless as she jabs him in the side with her elbow, and he pauses and looks down at her for the first time, shaking his head. His eyes are as silver as the moonlight, tonight, catching it and reflecting it back, like mirrors. He is so beautiful, she thinks dazedly.

"They say it makes you crazy," Hermione says breathless as she turns to face him fully, lips twitching into a half-smile. And then she fists her mittened hands in his heavy cloak and drags herself by her grip up onto her tiptoes and presses her mouth to his firm and hard before he can pull away. His lips are cold and soft and he is motionless, and Hermione pulls back and stares into his face and sees conflict written in every line of him; want and guilt all tangled inextricably together, and she needs the want to win out.

"Please?" she whispers. "Plea-"

Malfoy's mouth meets hers hard and greedy as his arms wrap around her, one hand sliding up to cradle the side of her face, scratchy wool gloves covering her ear, thumb brushing back and forth over her cheek in caress. He kisses her hard as though something has snapped within him, backing her up until her shoulders bump against the hedge and pinning her there between his body and the snow-coated greenery. His lips part at the same time as hers do, and his tongue flicks hot and teasing against hers, asking, demanding, making her knees go weak and pleasure and lust pulse needy between her thighs. She is wet, Hermione realises vaguely as she tangles her arms around his neck and kisses him with desperation threading beneath her want. Sopping wet and throbbing from just a kiss, and Merlin she wants _more_.

With her legs trembling and Malfoy licking into her mouth and drawing out moans and whimpers from her, Hermione shakes a mitten off so it dangles by the cord from her wrist, and worms her hand beneath his layers of clothing. She sighs in bliss and closes her teeth gentle over his plump bottom lip when her fingers find the smooth, hot skin of his abdomen, and her palm flattens to it. She kisses him eager and greedy, and her hand searches over his concave stomach and up to his chest, brushing across a pebbled nipple and feeling him _mmff_ into her mouth in response. It's intoxicating. The feel of him like this, all fear and memory gone, as if lost beneath the pristine blanket of snow. All she knows is how _good _he feels, and how her clit is aching and her body needy.

Then Malfoy's suddenly de-gloved hand delicately finds its way beneath the jersey of his she'd borrowed. His long fingers trace gentle and tentative over the soft swell of her breast through the cotton tee shirt she wears…but it's enough to make unwelcome memory and revulsion flash up, hard and shocking. The sickness hits Hermione's stomach like a fist, driving what little breath she has out of her altogether.

"No -" Hermione rips her mouth from his in a panic and presses herself back into the hedge as if she can fall back through it and escape, her breath coming in gasping, frantic pants. Guilt floods Malfoy's face as he steps back, and Hermione wishes she could erase it, because he shouldn't be feeling guilty for doing what she asked. It wasn't fair. This was only going to make him more determined to distance himself from her, and she didn't want that. It wasn't fair. Sobs built in her chest, but she kept them tamped down, voice wobbling only a little as she spoke.

"I - I'm sorry. I just..."

"I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have let you..." Malfoy's face goes from flushed and bright-eyed to stony in a second, expression shutting down and leaving only one thing clear - his regret. "We shouldn't have done that."

"I'm sorry," Hermione said again, helplessly, and he shook his head, eyes going soft now.

"It's not your fault. It's my responsibility to - to make sure these things don't happen, Granger, not yours. But this is why…this is why us doing anything isn't a good idea."

"Why?" A hitching sob slips out and makes the word shake and wobble. "Why are we supposed to let something Voldemort forced on us define us?"

"You shouldn't," he tells her, as he steps forward and takes her bare hand in his, slipping the mitten back on with tender care. She curls her fingers hard around his, and he meets her eyes and sighs. "But the way you reacted just now - this isn't what you want, Granger." She begins to protest, but he overrides her. "You can't know what you want." His voice goes on, implacable and reasonable. "You've been captured for over three fucking months, and I am the only person you can trust, the only person who can comfort you, the _only_ one who can protect you, and I clearly - clearly am attracted to you. How can you know that you would feel this way if we weren't in this situation?"

"I don't," she said as calmly as she could, fingers closed over his still, very tight because she needs him not to pull away. "In fact, no - I do. If not for all this, then there's no way that I would...want you. But I don't think it's because of some Stockholm Syndrome effect - I think it's because if I hadn't been captured I wouldn't have gotten to know you, and discovered that you've changed. That you're someone that...that I could care about." She takes a deep breath and adds: "A lot." Malfoy is silent for a long, long moment when she finishes, unable to meet her eyes. But he doesn't pull his hand away from hers - not yet. There is shame in his eyes, and so much guilt and self-loathing it hurts to look at him.

"How can you care, Granger? I am not a good person. I've done things that would make you sick, if I told you about them. I have done things that…that make me hate myself. That I can't ever forget. That I should never be forgiven for."

"That's not true, Malfoy. You haven't done anything because you wanted to. You did it because that's what you have to do, as an informant. It's not your fault. You're not to blame for what you've had to do." Hermione wants - _needs _- him to believe that, but she can see in the way he looks away from her, eyes dropping to the snow quilted ground, that he doesn't. He thinks himself a monster and he will not be persuaded otherwise, not by reason or logic, because he _feels _it. She can understand that. What he's had to do…it must feel like a taint on his soul. But it's not his fault. It's not_._ Malfoy smiles, very faintly, and it's so sad she can't stand the sight of it.

"I appreciate the sentiment, Granger, but whether or not I wanted to do it, I still did. The my victims aren't exactly going to feel better because I felt bad about torturing and slaughtering them. They're dead. Or…or wish they were." His jaw tightens. "You think you care, because that is how this situation has made you feel. But if you weren't dependent on me for life, I'm pretty sure you'd still be disgusted by me Granger." And the most frustrating thing was that he was right, but not in the way that he thought he was. Nearly everything he said was true, and yet it wasn't like that. If Hermione wasn't dependent on him but had still gotten to know him like this, she _would _still care about him. She knew it. But there was no way for her to have gotten to know him like this without her life being in his hands. It was infuriating.

"But -"

"There's no point, Granger. Just…drop it. There's no point in thinking any…feelings, are going to come to anything, because no matter who's right and who's wrong, you're going, and I'm...not." Malfoy is quiet and matter-of-fact, and Hermione sees the expectation of death on his face. He doesn't believe he'll live through the war, and it makes her angry and it makes her sick, and it makes her hate the Order for making him feel he has to do this.

"Then I'll wait, Malfoy," she says, with a wobbling smile at the cliché of it. "And then after the war - if it ever fucking ends - well, then maybe_._" It's a pipe dream, and they both know it, and Hermione thinks it's the very improbability that makes Malfoy agree.

"I won't hold you to it," is all he says, but his hand comes up to smooth over her cheek, needy and distant at once, fingers warm against her night-chilled skin. She can see the struggle in him so clearly now - the pull toward her that he tries to resist.

"You won't have to," Hermione tells him, and then pushes up on tiptoes again and brushes her lips against his cold cheek in a kiss, to seal the promise. "I'll hold _you_ to it though." He smiles at that - a genuine lopsided grin - and agrees in a murmur as he tucks her arm through his, and they start off again. They move further into the winding green and white maze, heading toward the very centre and that peaceful little spot where he has woven her daisy chains, and pointed out constellations, and made her feel free.

* * *

><p>Malfoy doesn't start sleeping in the bed with her again, like Hermione had hoped, and she doesn't feel she has the right to ask. She gets used to sleeping alone over the days that follow, ticking by toward a fortnight's worth. They still both have nightmares, but after the one suffering the nightmare has been soothed, the other leaves them, going back to their own lonely bed. Hermione hates it, this disentanglement he's forcing on them both, even as she understands his need to do so. She is going <em>home<em>, to everybody she has missed so desperately since she was first taken, and he is remaining here alone. It will be harder for him.

It feels hard enough for Hermione. She is excited about the thought of escape - of course she is. She cannot wait to be safe away from here, with the Order. But...

But things are very different now. _She _is different, and her feelings are different, and the Order chose to leave her here, and it's been so long, and she's been so damaged, and she doesn't know what she will do without Malfoy - the thought of losing his presence makes grief and denial rage in her chest - and it's frightening. What if she can't fit in where she used to, with Harry and Ron? What if Ron still feels _that way_ for her? What if they want to know what exactly happened and she has to tell them about what Malfoy did to her, and about what the Death Eaters did, and about how she tortured Malfoy? How could they understand that?

How could they ever look at her and not see how damaged she is?

Malfoy touches her knee, and she looks up from the page she's been staring blankly at for the past ten minutes. His eyes are soft, and warm, like steam and summer rain clouds and moonlight, and her breath catches. This is the way _he_ looks at her, and it makes her feel like bubbles in champagne, like chills down a spine, like she is a person who is hurting and not the wounded animal that she feels like at times.

"Are you all right?" He's concerned but not forceful - just a gentle query that she knows he won't push her to answer.

"Yeah," she whispers. "Just...thinking about going back. If - if it happens." His hand is still on her knee, and he gives it a little squeeze before pulling back, and she can see in Malfoy's face that he doesn't have any clue what she's thinking, and why would he? He thinks she's just scared she won't make it out.

"Don't worry, Granger. I'll get you home. I swear it." And Hermione believes him because he wouldn't promise that lightly, and even though happiness and anticipation swell in her chest she is hollow too, and that night she curls into a tiny ball for want of clinging to him, and cries herself silently to sleep.

* * *

><p>"He's going in four days," Malfoy says without even a 'hello' as he toes off his boots, bedroom door clicking shut and locking at a tap of his wand, before he strides across the room in his sock-clad feet and drops it gently on the table-top. Hermione watches him warily from her corner - he's an hour early and acting...different, and she knows there must be a reason. And she knows that she probably won't like it, whatever it is. There is a smear of blood at his temple that she can't stop staring at, and his face is grim.<p>

"Tell me," she says, getting to her feet and twisting her hands nervously together as she approaches him. He paces like a caged animal, up and down in front of the windows with his brow furrowed and his mouth a hard line. "What's happened, Malfoy?" He stops abruptly in his tracks, turning stiffly to face her.

"He says he wants you," Malfoy tells her without preamble, and the words drive the breath out of her. Hermione can almost feel the blood drain from her face as she stares at him wide-eyed and horrified. "When he gets back from America. I don't know what for - I - I didn't want to ask..." His voice trails away and he rubs a hand over his face, drawn and weary. "I had to say yes. Of course. I didn't have a choice. 'Who am I to refuse the Dark Lord', you know?" There is anger creeping into his voice, a controlled kind of rage, and he's pacing again, as Hermione just stands frozen and tries to process what he's said.

"He...he wants me," she says flatly, her voice sounding funny and loud in her own ears, and Malfoy stutters in his pacing as he grimaces, and nods in the affirmative.

"Unfortunately."

"So…what does that mean?" It's hard to breathe, and her hearing still seems wrong, her voice strangled but still too loud and echoing, like she's yelling down an empty corridor.

"It means that faking your death at my hands isn't going to work as an excuse, because he wants you alive," Malfoy says slowly and carefully. He stops pacing again, framed by the windows with the light rushing against him and casting his face in shadow, his hair shining golden with the light of near-sunset. "It means that we can't afford to fuck things up. It needs to happen as soon as the Dark Lord is gone. This is our only chance - we're not getting another, after this."

His face goes slack and ashen, gaze turning inward, and when he speaks his voice is tight and horrified, as if he's picturing it: "He wants to - to take you away from me, as soon as he gets back, and I..."

_From me_, Hermione thinks, and it makes her feel wobbly and hot and lost. But she can see the panic welling up in him and so she steps forward and takes his hands before it can grow and take him over, and he blinks down at her as though startled. "It's all right, Malfoy. We'll think of something. Okay? It's going to be all right."

"I'm getting you out. I swore it to you, and I meant it, Granger." Malfoy is so earnest that he frightens her, eyes dark in the shadow as he looks down into hers unblinkingly. "No matter what, I will not let him hurt you again." He says the words fiercely, his gaze never sliding from Hermione's, their hands tangled together too tightly, and her heart thud-_thud's_ too hard at the raw feeling in his voice. The ferocity, the desperation. He has never promised that before. He has never...

"Can you _make_ that promise?" Hermione asks without accusation or fear, her fingers sliding interlocked between Malfoy's, staring up at him haloed by the dying sunlight.

"Yes, Granger." He says the words again, emphasising each one, and infusing them with total certainty: "I will not let him hurt you again."

"I believe you," she whispers, but how he'll get her out without compromising himself now that Voldemort wants her alive, Hermione has no clue. Unless he came with her... And the idea makes so much sense now, that she can't help but believe he'll agree. She doesn't mention it just yet though. Not right now, when he is bending his head and placing a kiss on her forehead, before drawing away from her, avoiding her gaze.

"I need to go wash up. I - we'll talk about this later, after I've taken some time to think," he tells her tiredly, and she nods in silent agreement, letting his hands slip free of hers with a small pang of reluctance. She stands in front of the windows, watching him stride into the bathroom without a backward glance, and then turns to stare out over the gardens, all bathed in snow melt and the setting sun.

"Come with me," Hermione whispers, her hands balled into fists so that her nails bite her palms, and wishes to god and Merlin and anyone else listening that he would.

* * *

><p>They don't really discuss it that night. Not properly, anyway, in Hermione's opinion.<p>

Malfoy emerges from the bathroom in fresh trousers and undershirt, his hair damp and spiky and the stubble on his jaw still unshaven, and his expression is faraway and lost in thought. Hermione watches him from her seat at the small table, where she pretends to read a book but can't seem to focus on the words running over the page. He looks so tired - too tired - and she wants to tell him to just let it go. To just take her away now and go with her. To stop being a spy and start fighting - openly, with people at his back that he can trust, without worrying that his every move could get him killed, without being forced to commit heinous crimes in the name of the light.

He's done enough.

But she is silent, watching as he walks with weary steps to the liquor cabinet and unlocks it, stooping to pull out a full bottle of firewhiskey and plucking two crystal tumblers from the top of the small cabinet. He comes and sits at the table with a sigh and cracks the bottle open, pouring several decent slugs into the glass nearest him.

"You?" he asks, bottle hovering over the empty tumbler, and she meets his eyes - shadowed beneath like bruises - and nods after a second's hesitation. Malfoy fills the squat tumbler halfway without a word and slides it across the table to her, and every movement he makes seems exhausted, as though he's passed his breaking point and this is him just going through the motions. Hermione sips at the firewhiskey, making a face as she does, watching him over the rim as he downs the entire thing in three economic gulps and thuds the tumbler clumsily to the table, refilling it with a hand that trembles just fractionally.

"So what are we going to -" she begins, cradling her glass in both hands, watching the slanting sunset light dance orange on the tabletop, and stain Malfoy's skin. He cuts her off as he thunks the bottle back to the table, and lifts his tumbler.

"I don't know, yet. But I'll think of something, Granger."

"Come with me." It falls from her firewhiskey-numbed lips by mistake, and he stares at her with wide, startled eyes - one grey and the other licked eerie orange by the sunset - holding the tumbler frozen halfway to his mouth.

"I - " he starts to speak, to deny her, and Hermione can't stand to hear him refuse it.

"Don't be stupid. Don't." She leans forward, speaking fast and pleading. "No one would blame you, now. You don't have a choice - _really_, what are you going to do? How are you going to cover up me escaping in a way that doesn't end up with you…suffering Voldemort's displeasure?" _Killed_, she thinks - how is he going to avoid being killed as a traitor the moment he returns without her? It's ridiculous. It's far too risky, even if he can think of an excuse. Even if he comes up with an airtight reason for her to have escaped, he will still be punished, harshly, and he has to know that.

"You _have_ to realise the best thing to do is leave with me, Malfoy. You _have_ to." Hermione tries to fix her eyes to his as she speaks, but he looks down, the coward, taking a sip of his firewhiskey and then staring at his tumbler as he sets it on the table. "What else can you do?"

He is silent for a long moment, rake-thin in the white cotton tee shirt that is washed in the dying light, just like his face, and the fire set in his eye, and Hermione forces herself to gulp down some of her firewhiskey rather than keep pleading ever more frantically. It burns down her throat and kindles a fire in the pit of her stomach, and sets her eyes to watering. She blinks hard, staring at him through a haze of waviness, waiting. There is no point in pleading any further - Malfoy is stubborn, like her, and either he will come with her, or he won't, but begging won't help. Or so she tries to tell herself. She doesn't want him to die for her, or even to be hurt for her. Not again.

"I'll think of something," he says grimly, jaw set, lifting his eyes to hers, and draining his glass, before echoing himself determinedly: "I'll think of something."

"But -"

"Just don't." He glances at her, his expression begging her to let it drop, before pouring another tumbler full of firewhiskey. His movements are clumsy, his hand palsied as he pours, and some of the firewhiskey sloshes onto the table; a shiny little puddle on the dark wood. His tone is bone weary. "Please, just don't, Hermione. Just don't."

So she doesn't.

Instead Hermione picks her book up off her lap and sits back in her chair, pointedly shifting her focus to the black script on the parchment even though she can't take in a word of it, holding her firewhiskey glass in one hand. She entirely ignores Malfoy, and that seems to be what he wants; in her peripheral vision she can see him slouch, and some of the stiffness melt out of the way he holds himself, his features slacken, and his gaze goes unfocused - staring out the window at the gardens in the dying sunlight. Hermione sits and drinks her firewhiskey in small, measured sips, pretending to read while she watches him like a hawk. He takes gulps, not sips, and keeps pouring refills with a clumsiness that only gets worse as the alcohol takes effect - drinking down the bottle level fast. His features are drawn and exhausted, and his whole body is filled with a trapped kind of despair that she can sense in the air around him like an aura.

_Come with me_, Hermione thinks fiercely at him all lit in sunset flame, fear clouding her mind like the firewhiskey she's sipping automatically. _Come with me. _But she is silent as the sun slowly sinks, and with the fiery light gone he is left ashen and grey and cold. A drowned man in the blue-grey of twilight, his eyes glazed and dulled with drink and despair.

* * *

><p>The clock ticks around toward 6.27pm as Hermione sits curled in her armchair and stares at the bedroom door. There are only two nights left until Voldemort leaves, and as Malfoy will be taking on extra responsibility with Voldemort gone he's been spending more time busy with his duties, receiving instructions from the Dark Lord. He hasn't told Hermione what those extra responsibilities will entail, and she doesn't want to know. She can imagine well enough and her skin crawls.<p>

Strangely enough she has spent more time hoping Malfoy will be all right if he stays, than she has daydreaming about being back with the Order.

There is a sound then - a rattle of the door handle and Hermione sits up straighter with expectation - and then Malfoy shoulders the door open neatly, hands occupied by a large serving tray. He kicks it shut behind him and smiles across the room at her without having to search the dimly lit space. His gaze is pulled to her directly, like a compass to magnetic north. He looks tired, but the small smile on his lips is genuine, as far as Hermione can tell.

"Hi. I brought food," he says tentatively, holding up the tray as he pries off his boots and leaves them in a jumble by the door. He's in shirt-sleeves rolled up to the elbow, the fine knit woolen sweater he'd worn that morning gone, a trace of blood on the collar of his white shirt hinting at why he might have ditched the sweater. Hermione gulps, feeling a little sick. Blood could be notoriously difficult to get out of wool with _scourgifies_ - it took a proper Muggle-style wash.

"To celebrate," he goes on, and Hermione blinks in confusion as she unfolds herself from the armchair and moves to take the tray from him. There is a smear of blood along the underside of his jaw, near his ear, but he smells faintly of cologne and sweat, not the reeking stench of death. His eyes are smoky-soft and gentle set in their exhaustion-shadowed hollows, not the sharp, bleak grey they look when he's been forced to kill. But then maybe he's finally getting used to it, she thinks despite herself. The tray is heavy, the bottom of it warm.

"Celebrate what?" she asks as she sets the tray down on the table, a wave of her hair fluffing down from its precarious knot at the nape of her neck as she leans down.

"You going home. Of course," Malfoy says, mild bemusement evident in the crinkling at the corners of his eyes and furrowing of his brow as she straightens and turns to face him. Of course. That is a thing worthy of celebration, isn't it? Hermione pushes her disobedient hair off her face and it falls straight back again, and he takes a step forward - inside her personal space now - and with firm, precise fingers, sweeps the fall of hair back from her face and tucks it into the knot, one-handed. She blinks up at him speechlessly, lips parted and suddenly dry.

"Granger?" His face shifts to show concern. She hates that he does these things. That he says they can't...and then touches her like _that_, with such gentle intimacy. It's not fair. Not at all. Doesn't he realise what it does to her? In two days' time she will be leaving, and that is good - leaving this awful place, where she has been tortured and terrified and forced to do things that make her sick. She can't wait to leave. To be safe. Only she will be going without him. Without this man who brings her Muggle food - she can smell it on the air because she loves the way it makes her think of her childhood, and good memories, and safety. This man who touches her like she is unspeakably precious, and tries so hard to do what he thinks is right - even when she tries to persuade him not to - and has protected her as best he can, regardless of the danger to his own life.

"Of course," she echoes him numbly. But... "You've come up with a cover story, then?" Malfoy nods, swaying back a step and scrubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand. He looks permanently exhausted past all endurance since the news that Voldemort was leaving; an ashy undertone to his skin, and purple shadows sweeping deep beneath his eyes. The scar of the whip lash on his cheek stands out livid purple-red, and he's all skin and bones. It hurts to look at him.

"Yeah, Granger. I have. I -" He blinks slow and fuzzy and his smile is forced and strange on his face. "I'll go shower, and then tell you over dinner."

"Okay," she whispers, feeling uncertain and muddled. She smiles, and it feels just as forced on her lips as his looks. Malfoy tells her to start without him, if she likes, but Hermione shakes her head. She'll wait. She listens to the taps running in the bathroom, sitting at the end of the bed in the grey flannel pyjama trousers of Malfoy's that she favours now the weather has gone cold, and a white tee shirt shrunk to fit her. Idly, she re-does the folds at the bottoms of the too-long trousers, fiddling with the hems. Malfoy's bought her a few items of clothing, over the months, but she's never asked for anything. Hermione's used to his clothing - it does the job and it's...nice.

She listens to him move about in the bathroom, and it's so strange to think that in a couple of nights, this will never happen again. She will never be here again. Never listen to him wash dried blood down the drain, the taps running hard to cover his hitching breaths as he tries not to unravel. Never feel the constant fear ease slightly at knowing he was with her after a long day alone. Hermione sits and stares at her hands - fingers picking at the hem of Malfoy's trousers - and thinks that she should be happier.

Instead she feels dulled and numbed, like she's been wrapped in cotton wool and her ears plugged up, and she doesn't understand it.

When he comes out they eat McDonald's at the table; he washing it down with firewhiskey, and she with coke. She can't seem to taste it properly, and it takes a great effort to chew, and swallow. They sit in quiet together, for the first few minutes - Hermione doesn't ask him what his plan is, instead waiting for him to explain it in his own time. She feels for a moment absurdly like they're in some stereotypical domestic scene; the husband and wife eating dinner in peaceful silence while he de-stresses from work.

"I'm going to frame Crabbe and Goyle Sr.," he says suddenly, voice crisp and decided. Hermione pauses mid-bite of her burger, staring at him as questioningly as possible with her mouth full. She must look ridiculous. The corner of his mouth turns up a little for a brief, sparkling moment. Then his expression smooths out again, as he goes on and she finishes her mouthful, listening.

"It makes sense. Crabbe and Goyle Sr., have had it out for me for a long time now. And they don't know that Voldemort want you alive. It's believable that they'd kill you to get at me." The blunt way he puts it sends chills down Hermione's spine. Even after everything she's suffered, to have her murder spoken of so plainly is...frightening. She pushes that twinge down; nothing is going to happen to her. Not anymore. Not ever again.

"_Will_ he believe that, though?" Hermione isn't certain, staring at Malfoy across the table with his eyes shadowed and his expression blank, his hair still damp from washing up. It seems a slim hope to pin his life on.

"I'll make sure he does."

"But - you'll have to explain why you let them get to me. Why you didn't watch me better. Why you didn't protect me for him... Won't he still be angry at you?"

Malfoy leans back in his chair, and takes a sip of his firewhiskey. He's trying for nonchalance but she has lived in this room with him for over two months, and she knows him. It's a carefully cultivated sense of ease, but he can't hide the stiffness in the way he holds himself. Not from her. She expects lies but he gives her...honesty.

"Yes. Yes, he will. I expect to be punished quite severely -" she can't hold back her sickened catch of breath as he says the words with a shrug, as though his torture is of no consequence "- but he should accept my story as truth."

Hermione feels ill. Her appetite is gone, in a lurching fall. "_Severely?_ Malfoy...Malfoy you can't... You can't do that for me. That's not all right. I can't -"

"Granger." He shoots her a weary look.

"No, Malfoy! You only just barely recovered from..." She can't say it, and stutters to a halt for a moment. "You _haven't_ really recovered. You've not got enough weight on you yet, and - and...god, Malfoy, I don't want to be the reason you're hurt, anymore. I don't want that. I can't-"

"And I don't want _you_ to be hurt anymore, Granger," Malfoy says, his tone trying to shut down any argument, determinedly cheerful and it seems so wrong, coming from him. It makes him seem like a stranger, as he goes on in that oddly upbeat voice. "And I will be fine. I will survive, and I will crawl my way back into the Dark Lord's good books, and you will be back home safe with the Order, with your Potter, and Weasley, and -"

"And you will come back, after the war -_ alive,_" she interrupts stupidly, too earnest and not even entirely knowing what she means by that - she wants Malfoy, and she can't deny that. But does she really, truly want him in that way? Not just seeking comfort and warmth in another human being, but waiting and hoping like they'd talked the other night? Hermione thinks she does, and it terrifies her. As for Malfoy - his expression is unreadable as he smiles faintly across the massacred feast of McDonald's at her.

"That's the plan, Granger."


	11. Part Eleven

So this is it - with this chapter, 'Crumple' draws to a close, at approx. 90,000 words, twice as long as I originally planned. I presently have no plans for an epilogue, as I feel that with this chapter I have achieved what I originally set out to do.

To recap what I wanted to achieve:

_The premise of this fic is to write a realistic story using the trope of Draco being a (not-necessarily loyal) Death Eater who for some reason has to sexually assault/rape Hermione in order to protect her shortly after they first meet in the story, in such a way as to allow for a successful and (mostly) healthy relationship to develop. _

_I do not like :_

_- rape scenes written gratuitously, as 'smut'_

_- Draco doing it unnecessarily because he 'loves' Hermione; when he could reduce the trauma by telling her he's on her side but doesn't; 'making' her enjoy it physically and/or mentally; and when their romantic relationship starts partially thanks to her enjoyment of the rape, or classic Stockholm Syndrome._

I think that with this story, I have managed to write a capture/rape trope fic, that has handled the subject matter realistically, avoided the majority of the common pitfalls, and allows for the development of a successful and (eventually) healthy relationship. No doubt many of you will disagree with me - either because you think there can _never_ be a successful relationship after a (forced on both sides) assault has taken place, which is fully understandable...or just because you just thought I handled and/or wrote it badly. I hope the latter isn't a common opinion! Regardless, I'm personally pretty satisfied with my effort :3

Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, and favourited this fic. I really appreciate it so, so much! If you would like a pdf, one will shortly be available here with my other fic pdfs (take out the spaces, and change 'dot' to an actual period): 1drv dot ms /1RADcQP

I hope you enjoy!

* * *

><p><strong><span>Part Eleven<span>**

The next morning, after Malfoy is gone, Hermione stands in front of the bathroom mirror and stares at herself, examining her face. She is thinner than she used to be, and her hair has grown a couple of inches and looks bedraggled. There are hollows under her eyes, and her lips are chapped, and she stands there like a frightened animal, she realises. Shoulders hunched forward and slumped a little, head ducked ever-so-slightly, expression uncertain. She looks at herself and sees a beaten dog.

"I'm going home," Hermione says softly, and forces herself to stand straighter - shoulders back and chin up. That helps a little - she looks more plain exhausted now than she does cowed. She doesn't want to go back looking like a broken shell of herself, because she isn't - she _survived_ this, and while she may be damaged and changed, she is not broken. But Harry and Ron and all the others will all look at her and see only her trauma, if she doesn't force them to see otherwise. She knows that from past experience, from seeing the way they looked at people who had been rescued - and looking at them that way herself. With pity. And Hermione doesn't ever want Harry and Ron to look at her that way.

It will be so strange, she thinks as she drags her hair back into a bun, and wets a flannel under hot water. The thought of being in a house filled with noisy, busy, sociable people again seems foreign and unnatural. Hermione has gotten used to the quiet. She scrubs her face with the hot flannel, trying to bring some colour to her cheeks, and then pats her face dry, making faces at herself in the mirror.

"Hi Harry," she practices, pinning an awkward smile on her face. She looks stilted and garish to her own eyes, and she sighs. It's pointless anyway; Hermione doubts there will be any casual greetings like that for some time. Even just _thinking_ about seeing everyone again makes her chin tremble uncontrollably and her eyes well up salty and wet, her arms itch with the need to fling herself at them and hug them half to death. But there is also that part of her that feels overwhelmed at the thought, and wants to retreat to her armchair in the corner of Malfoy's room and half-hide in a rug. It's all too much. She can't even _imagine_ properly how it will feel to see them again.

And to never see Malfoy again? She stares herself directly in the eyes, silently asking her mirror-self: How will _that_ feel? Her mirror-self blinks back at her, and her mouth twists; an ugly little shape all filled with grief, and Hermione covers her mouth with the back of her hand and turns away, leaning back against the vanity and stifling the tears that threaten.

* * *

><p>"You're going home tomorrow," Malfoy says in the evening, forcing a smile onto his lips as he straightens from his desk, where he's spent the last few hours furiously scribbling on reams of parchment. He stretches, working the kinks out of his neck and shoulders, and Hermione pauses in turning down the bedclothes and stares at him mutely. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. <em>Tomorrowtomorrowtomorrow <em>- she can't seem to wrap her head around the idea. "Aren't you excited?"

Only this is home now, Hermione thinks stupidly, in a daze. Not this whole horrible mansion where people are hurt and killed, and human monsters lurk around every corner, but this small suite, with Malfoy. Gradually, without her even really noticing, this place has become her home - she has been here in the mansion for over three long months. It will be Christmas in just a few weeks, Hermione realises, after some quick, rough mental calculations. Hermione will get to have Christmas with the Order - and Malfoy will get to have Christmas alone, recovering from the no doubt brutal torture Hermione's 'death' will incite Voldemort to inflict on him, even if his framing of Crabbe and Goyle Sr. works.

"Granger?"

He will be here, alone, struggling to survive the aftermath of brutal torture with no one to care for him. And even if - when - he recovers from it, he will still be alone, forced to do horrible things that she knows tear him apart, his life hanging in the balance every moment, and she might never see him alive again, and the thought is unbearable. She loves him. She loves Draco Malfoy in a way she has never loved anyone before - not like the disappointing crush on Ron, or the thrill of Viktor's interest, but a deep pulling tug toward him as though he's driven hooks into her heart, and her escape will wrench them out, leaving holes that won't fill. Hermione tries not to cry. She tries. But the tears start flowing as she stands there at the bedside, and she buries her face in her hands, feeling stupid and sweaty and utterly shaken. Like a blubbering idiot, she can't stop herself from crying.

"Hey...hey, Granger... What's wrong? What's going on? You're going to be home. It's going to be over." Suddenly there is the heat of Malfoy's arms around Hermione, drawing her closer, and she sways into him gladly, her hands clutching at his shirt at the sides and her face burying against his chest. "It's all going to be over. You'll be _safe_."

Her breath is coming whooping hitches as she tries to speak, voice wobbling and stuffed with tears: "Not without you. Not...not without..." And then the sobs rise up again and Hermione has to stop speaking while she tries to suppress them. Malfoy holds her very gently in the circle of his arms and rubs her back between her shoulder blades, making meaningless soft soothing noises as her shoulders shake and her chest aches with the force of her grief. Malfoy is patient, waiting until she finally contains herself, taking a few shaky breaths, and pulling back just enough to look up at him - his arms slip away as she does, and she finds herself missing the warmth of him immediately.

"Please don't make me go without you, Malfoy. I can't stand the thought of - of you staying here, being hurt because of me, being alone… Please - please come with me." Her voice is rough and nasal - her nose is stuffed and half-running, and her eyes feel puffy from crying; she must look like an absolute mess.

He shakes his head slowly: no. And Hermione's ribs feel like they're cracking under the pressure that seizes her. Her chin trembles, and she sinks her teeth into her lower lip, focusing on the pain.

"I can't, Granger. I have a duty. I have a job to do. And if there is the smallest chance that I can be helpful here, undercover, then I will stay. I helped started this damned war - I'm not going to be a coward and run away to hide in safety. I don't deserve it. I of all people do not deserve safety, or comfort, or -" He stops himself abruptly, cursing under his breath and looking away. "I just can't."

He'd tried to stop himself from saying too much, but he'd let slip plenty before he fell silent, and it confirmed what Hermione had thought for quite some time - this was Malfoy's penance. His punishment, for being on the wrong side. Being here was his way to try to make some kind of twisted amends and find forgiveness…only the problem was that for every bit of help he might lend to the Order, he was _definitely_ taking part in the harm of innocents. He would never be clean - he would never make up for the harm he caused, because the very nature of his duties as spy were to keep dirtying his hands, over and over.

Malfoy would be trapped in perpetual self-loathing and self-sacrifice, as long as the war went on and he remained here; there was no way out. And looking up at him through her tear-swollen eyes, Hermione isn't entirely sure he wants a way out. She swallows hard, feeling the hooks of him in her heart wrench and tear at the meat of it. She may not be able to force Malfoy to come with her, but if he can stay alive long enough - and he's made it this far hasn't he? - then she can talk to the Order about him when she gets back. She will _make_ Kingsley order him back in - make him say Malfoy is needed more on the outside. Malfoy will have to follow orders - he won't have an excuse to stay, and she will get him away from here. To safety, and to her.

It won't stop him from being tortured after her escape, but it is all that she can do unless Malfoy changes his mind by tomorrow night. And the likeliness of _that_ happening is…miniscule.

"Don't sleep in your bed tonight," she tells him very softly, reaching out and taking his hand where it hangs at his side, and curling her fingers through it. "Sleep in with me. Please? This is the last…and then I'll be gone, and -"

"You don't have to beg, Granger," he says, and his voice is low, needy, and it sends hot shivers sparking and forking through her insides. He lifts his free hand, smoothing his thumb across her forehead in an odd caress, and then tugs his other hand free of hers. "I'll just go get changed."

With a nod, Hermione clambers into the bed, sitting with her legs drawn up toward her chest beneath the blankets, arms wrapped loosely around her shins and chin resting on a knee. She's in a pair of his shorts and baggy undershirt - she doesn't need to change for bed; she's already in acceptable pyjamas. So she waits, breathing slowly and carefully, trying to dam her emotion and bottle it down tight, cheeks feeling stiff with the drying remnants of her tears.

When Malfoy slides into the bed he doesn't try to enforce any distance between them. He knows what Hermione wants - what he wants just as badly as she does, despite his insistence that it is wrong. Apparently tonight - their last night - is different. In nothing but his pyjama trousers, Malfoy lies back against the pillows and beckons to her, arms opening, and she shuffles across to him immediately, eagerly. Her head against his naked shoulder and her arm over his torso - warm and smooth - and her other arm crushed up beneath her, hand tucked to her neck. For his part, Malfoy wraps both his arms firm around her, and tangles their legs together, and he is hot and close and _real_, and Hermione feasts on the feel of him.

She shuts her eyes and breathes deep of his scent - soap and the barest hint of sweat overlaying the natural smell that is _him_ - and traces her fingers over his exposed skin, mapping the landscape of his abdomen, and his chest, and shoulders and arms beneath her fingertips. This could be the last time, for a very long time. _'This could be the last time ever'_ creeps in at the edges of her mind_. _But Hermione denies that thought, shoving it back; the possibility is unacceptable. Malfoy will be fine. But she will memorise him, just in case Kingsley can't get him to leave soon, just in case he loses his feelings for her, just in case of... other things.

* * *

><p>Despite Hermione's attempts to stay awake clinging to Malfoy, eventually his warmth and his closeness lull her off to sleep, slumped peacefully in his arms, dreamless and unaware. She wakes drowsy in the near-dark sprawled across the bed on her stomach, and knows instinctively it is still the middle of the night. The bed is empty, and pain and hurt spike sharp in her stomach - how could he leave? He knew how much this last night meant to her, even if she didn't tell him aloud exactly how much. She sits up, pushing her hair back off her face, and squints into darkness of the room, trying to make out Malfoy's shape in the bed he keeps made up in the corner for himself. But she can see no shape in it, nothing huddled within the blankets.<p>

Fear leaps, and adrenaline floods Hermione's system, leaving her suddenly, viciously alert, heart thudding quick in her chest. She seizes handfuls of the bedclothes, preparing to fling them off and get up and look for a note from Malfoy to explain his absence, when she hears a sound. A sob. It comes from the bathroom, and her wide eyes swivel toward it, and she sees it then - the dim, barely-there light seeping from beneath the door, the soft blue-white of a _lumos_ charm. A few heartbeats pass, Hermione's blood rushing in her ears like the ocean as she strains to listen to the silence, and then, finally there is another sob. Choked and muffled, it's a broken thing, and Hermione bites her lip as she listens, fingers curling in to her palms so that her nails dig in to the soft flesh, shoulders hunching.

Malfoy is crying because she is going. Because she is going, and he is not.

It hurts. It hurts to know that her safety is going to leave him alone and friendless in this hellhole, and Hermione wants to go to him and try to comfort him…only she knows her attempt wouldn't be welcomed. There are some things that Malfoy doesn't want her to see, and wouldn't thank her for intruding upon. And besides, there is nothing Hermione can say to make it any better. Unless she stays, or he goes. And the idea of staying is unthinkable to her - much as the idea of leaving seems to be to him.

So Hermione lies curled in the dark in bed, a comma beneath the blankets, and listens to Malfoy weep like a punishment; the sound halting and barely audible through the door. When he finally comes back to bed, she is still awake, crescent marks bruised deep into her palms. She shifts when he gets into bed, rolling to face him, blinking her eyes sleepy-open as if she's only just woken up. She probably does a terrible job of acting like she hadn't heard everything, but Malfoy doesn't call her on it. His eyes are red and swollen as he lies down, stretched out and propped up on an elbow.

"You all right, Granger?" His voice is husky as he meets her eyes in the dark, dragging the blankets back up over him. She nods, not trusting her voice.

"Mmhmm," she manages weakly, and Malfoy gives her a searching look, but doesn't probe.

"Go to sleep, Granger," he tells her softly instead. "You've got a long day ahead of you tomorrow." And then he sinks down into the pillows on his side and shuts his eyes, hand loose-curled up beneath his chin. "Good night."

"'Night, Malfoy," Hermione whispers, and with her breath caught in her throat shuffles closer and takes his hand, fumbling her fingers through his. Malfoy's eyes flick wide open at her touch, shocky and wounded silver in the near-dark, but his fingers twine through hers readily enough, squeezing almost painfully tight. Hermione falls asleep with their hands interlocked, tight as a vice, and she doesn't dream of anything.

* * *

><p>The next day passes slowly.<p>

As always, Malfoy is gone when Hermione wakes up, and his House Elf has left her some food. She eats mechanically sitting at the table, looking out over the beautifully manicured gardens. It must have snowed again in the night, because this morning white slush is melting on the grass, thanks to the bright winter sunlight streaming down and warming the earth. Hermione eats her porridge and stares out there almost unblinking, thinking that she will be happy to never see this garden ever again.

After breakfast, she bathes, soaking in the tub until her fingers and toes have gone white and prune-wrinkly, killing time until nearly midday. She washes her hair, and shaves her armpits and legs with Malfoy's straight-edge razor very, very carefully before she gets out.

There is a small pile of clothes in Malfoy's top right dresser drawer that are 'hers', and Hermione digs out striped green silk undershorts that Malfoy had transfigured into trousers, and a white undershirt that he'd shrunk to fit her. She imagines wearing a bra again will be both a relief - she does miss the support - and difficult to get used to. Ditto with knickers - she hasn't worn any in months, except the horrors Voldemort sent. She's become accustomed to Malfoy's comfortable tee shirts, pyjamas and under things.

Normally, she would make the bed and then try to read for much the rest of the day, but today Hermione can't be bothered putting in the effort. It's always hard not to just succumb to daydreams, but today is worse. Today she both cannot wait for the time to pass so she can _go_, and is dreading it more than nearly anything. She feels restless and caged, and seething under her skin with an impatient kind of anger; if only Malfoy would come with her. It was _him_ that left her feeling torn and worried, when she should be frantic with nothing but excitement. Hermione finds herself hating both the Order, and him - resentment burning like a coal in her chest as, dressed, she tosses her wet towel in the hamper.

Her dark hair falls in wet straggles past her breasts, dripping damp patches on her shirt as she slowly paces around the large suite, taking everything in one last time. Her eyes skim over her - _Malfoy's_ - four poster bed, where she has slept and cared for his injuries in nearly equal amount. The hideous lingerie and tools of torture Voldemort sent Malfoy, tucked up in their open box on a high shelf. The corner bed Malfoy used to sleep in when she first came up from the dungeons, and has been again for the past week - excluding last night. The armchair she'd claimed as hers, that had been her only safe haven for so long, when she had still been scared of Malfoy. The liquor cabinet...

The liquor cabinet - her eyes fall on it by chance, but stay locked to it, sharp. Barefoot she paces over, crouching down and pulling at the door. It's locked, and she swears softly in frustration. There is nothing she would like more right now than a drink, to douse the embers of resentment and anger that smoulder in her. It takes her over an hour by the clock to jimmy the door open with a sturdy shoehorn she found in the back of Malfoy's wardrobe. Hermione doesn't mind that it takes so long; she's glad, in fact. It helps her fill in the time instead of sitting and dwelling on the inevitable. And when she achieves success, she has firewhiskey to help distract her further. It's a win/win situation for her.

When Malfoy gets back at 5.30pm on the dot, Hermione is curled up on the floor by the windows, cradling most of a glass of firewhiskey. The bottle she'd opened is a fair bit less than half full now, and she is a fair bit more than half drunk.

"Granger?" Malfoy shuts the door behind him, and looks for Hermione in her usual spot as he pries off his boots, holding a bag in one hand. He looks bone tired - dead on his feet - and the blood splashed over his ashen skin and white shirt don't help him look any better. Worry fills his face and pushes out the weary, numb strain when he doesn't spot her straight away, perched down in her comfortable spot, hidden by the table that sits between them. He tosses the bag onto his desk with a light thump, and she wonders what's inside, but doesn't ask. Sometimes it's better not to know. "Granger?"

"Hi," she mumbles from her spot on the floor, lifting her glass in salute and squinting at him, standing there by the door all bathed in the sunset and blood. She wonders with an idle sort of horror what abhorrent things he's done today to leave him hollow-eyed and drenched in blood, even his hair a blood-streaked mess. "You're home."

"You're drunk," he answers, and he doesn't sound very happy about it. Hermione would care that he is exhausted and disappointed in her, except that she is drunk and doesn't have to summon up the energy needed to feel guilty. She feels pleasantly care_free_, in fact - a heady, dizzy kind of feeling that she knows is only an illusion, but which she embraces anyway.

"Probably."

"You shouldn't be drinking." Malfoy walks over, gait slow and tired, shoulders slumped and steps dragging, and bends and swipes up the bottle. He stinks of sweat and urine, and metallic blood, and Hermione feels suddenly less drunk, something inside her shrinking down into a terrified ball. "You need to sober up for tonight," he says as he straightens, and then rather hypocritically takes a long drink from the bottle himself. He stumbles back a step and sinks into the chair at the table, and worry sparks up in her. He hasn't looked this bad in a while.

"What happened?" Hermione asks him, climbing to her feet a little unsteadily, holding onto the window frame for balance. Between sitting in the same position for an hour or so and the alcohol, she is stiff and wobbly. "Are you hurt?"

Malfoy takes another long swig from the bottle before he answers.

"I'm not hurt, Granger. I had interrogations today. Voldemort's orders." He stares at nothingness for a long, silent moment, and then takes another drink, eyes just as dull. Finally he elaborates. "I showed three half-blood traitors what their intestines looked like," he says in a monotone, and Hermione winces. There's some small mercy to the fact that the people he'd tortured were not total innocents, but once on Voldemort's side...but it is a very small mercy. She doubts it makes him feel any less guilty - it certainly doesn't make her feel any less sick. Her desire to _leave_ - and take him with her - intensifies, as she gulps at her drink, before finding her voice.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, unable to tear her eyes from his blood sodden shirt. Malfoy looks up at her, grey eyes flat and distant.

"I'm not the one who needs your sympathy, Granger," he says wearily, and then gets up, leaving the bottle on the table as he heads into the bathroom, unbuttoning his shirt as he goes. She bites her lip, not speaking because yes he is, only he refuses it. Draining her glass, Hermione turns her gaze to the bottle he's left on the small table; the paper label is brightly blood-streaked from his hand, as is most of the rest of the bottle. She wrinkles her nose and decides against topping up her glass - and wonders idly if that was Malfoy's plan all along. He's right though, she knows - she needs to sober up.

First though - no point in wasting drink. She tips the dregs of her drink down her throat and shudders at the burn, making a face. It's honestly awful.

* * *

><p>They eat dinner in a silence that fills the room, hanging thick and ripe with anticipation. Hermione has to force herself to eat, too nervous to be hungry, and Malfoy picks at his food, pushing it around the plate and barely touching it. Hermione nearly speaks a dozen times, throughout the meal, but she doesn't know what to say, only that she wants to say <em>something.<em> To thank Malfoy, perhaps, except that seems stupid - she feels so much more than simple gratitude toward him, and thanks...it wouldn't be enough. It wouldn't communicate everything she wants to. Hermione doesn't think there is anything Malfoy would allow her to do that would do justice to how she feels, right now.

She sighs and puts her knife and fork down in surrender with half the roast dinner still on the plate, in ruins now from her ineffective picking at it. Malfoy lifts his eyes - still dull and hollow, and very, very distant, like he has shut himself away.

"You should get dressed," he says matter-of-factly, pointing over his shoulder with the fork at his desk, before stabbing a small chunk of roast pumpkin. "There are clothes in the bag. I got things that should be basically one size fits all, but just let me know if you need the sizing adjusted."

"...Thanks." Hermione nibbles at her lip, feeling oddly set off balance by his flat tone, but gets up, and takes the bag through to the bathroom without another word. She tips the contents out onto the bathroom floor, sifting through them. He's clearly gone shopping at a wizarding store, she thinks, because while the clothes are basically Muggle in appearance, there are no brand tags. Soft, thick woollen leggings, a warm undervest, a long chambray button-down shirt that ended past her bum and only need the cuffs folded back once, a woolly jersey that fits quite well, a crocheted hat, wool gloves, and thick wool socks.

Between the clothes Malfoy had picked, a cloak, and a warming charm, Hermione will be toasty warm outside tonight even if it snows. She leaves the hat, gloves, and jersey off for now, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror. It feels so weird to be in clothes other than Malfoy's. She drags her fingers through her hair, and then twists the length around and around, making a precarious bun that she fixes in place by knotting through itself, and then pinches her cheeks until they go pink, and smiles into the mirror. Does she look normal? It's hard to tell. Hermione doesn't know what normal is even supposed to look like anymore. She leaves Malfoy's clothes in the hamper, and for some reason it feels like a loss, letting them go.

A goodbye that she isn't ready for.

"You look - those look like they fit," Malfoy says, correcting himself with a wince as he taps the dinner tray with his wand, and it pops out of existence. He turns away quickly, but not before Hermione sees the blush from his near-slip on his cheeks. He is dressed in warm clothes now - a thick jersey, and his boots on, and there is a cloak draped over the back of his chair.

"They do." She tosses the bag on the bed. There is a great gulf of separation and politeness between them, and it makes her want to scream in frustration. Last night they slept curled together, and now? She has never felt so far apart. She wants to kiss him, to cling to him, to cry and rage and beg him to come with her. To tell him she loves him, like some stupid, emotional idiot. Hermione does none of these things, instead brushing her hands awkwardly over the front of her chambray shirt to try to smooth out the wrinkles, and perching on the edge of the bed by the bag. "Thanks. I hadn't thought about...clothes."

Malfoy lifts a corner of his mouth up into a pained, forced smirk as he retrieves a bottle from the liquor cabinet and pours himself a drink. "I wasn't about to send you back to the Order in my fucking shorts and undershirt, Granger. Wouldn't want them thinking..."

"The truth?" she interrupts, sounding half-angry because the Order is going to find out everything that happened and how she feels about him during debriefing, and there is no point in trying to hide it. She has told him that she cares, and that she wants him, and that she will wait, and she _will_, and she isn't going to hide it either. She shouldn't be ashamed of any of the things that have happened here. Not any of them. And neither should he.

And then she realises how her frustration must sound to Malfoy, who stands stock still and ashen with guilt and self-loathing as he thinks only of the bad. Her cheeks go hot as her blood runs cold, and she cringes at herself, and at the memories.

"Sorry. I didn't mean...not really. I mostly meant..." She chews on her lip, and then tries: "...the good things?" Malfoy unfreezes enough to tip the contents of his glass down his throat, wheezing a little at the burn, and then eyes her cautiously.

"I know," he says but he's clearly lying, his hand shaking as he pours himself another drink, the hypocrite. And then he turns away from her abruptly, dropping his glass to the table with a clunk and going to his desk. He sits and pulls out a fresh sheet of parchment, dipping his quill.

"We'll go once I'm finished with this," he tells her. "With Voldemort gone, there's no point in waiting."

"Okay." She nods obediently, voice small and hands folded together in her lap. She isn't ready. She isn't ready to leave him. To leave _here?_ Hermione cannot wait. But to leave Malfoy? She feels numb as she slides her jersey on over her head, and fetches her boots, lacing them on tightly before she puts on her gloves and hat, and then sits back down on the edge of the bed. Malfoy's quill scratches quick over the parchment, his eyes terribly cold and empty as he finishes the letter with a flourish and then folds it up, sealing it with a blob of wax and the signet ring on his desk, before flinging his window open and whistling out it into the night.

An owl appears out of the dark moments later, and Hermione strains to listen as he murmurs to it, and she can just barely make out the words: "Narcissa Malfoy, Tweel. Now."

A letter for his mother? Hermione furrows her brow as she stands, ready to leave. In case everything goes wrong tonight, she supposes, and can't suppress the shudder of fear that takes her, her palms sweaty inside her gloves, and her whole body rigid with nerves and anticipation.

* * *

><p>Despite things not going as planned - as always - they make it out of the mansion without incident, thanks to Malfoy's quick thinking, and the lack of brains in the snatchers they come across, but Hermione can't help but think that Malfoy's behaviour will count as deeply suspicious in retrospect, when her escape comes to light. She worries silently as she hurries along beside Malfoy - her hand in his so that he can guide her over the uneven ground in the moonless night, without even a <em>lumos<em> charm. The snow shifts beneath her boots, and her nose feels numb with cold. Due to the warning wards, they are unable to use any magic in the stretch of land between the mansion and the forest they are making for.

What if Malfoy's plan to frame Crabbe and Goyle Sr. is flawed? What if it isn't enough to convince Voldemort? What if Voldemort discovers the truth? She squeezes Malfoy's hand tighter, struggling to keep up with his longer strides as he tows her along. She wants to ask him about the details of his plan, but it will have to wait until they are safely within the forest's bounds, beyond the wards. Her breath makes clouds in the near dark - the night clear and starry, lending them just enough light to barely see their way by as they hurry away from danger, toward the forest edge. The land they cross is exposed, and any patrol flying above will spot them, and Hermione's heart is in her throat.

But despite that - "Wait," she whispers as they reach the forest edge, pulling at Malfoy's hand. She can just barely see the glare on his features as he stops and looks down at her.

"_What?_"

"I just want to - to see," she whispers, and turns like Lot's wife, to face the place that had been her prison for over a quarter of a year. Malfoy seems to understand because he doesn't try to drag her onward, just puts his hands on her shoulders and walks her back a way, into the reaching shadows of the trees. And then he stays there behind her, his gloved hands warm on her shoulders, his body a wall that she sways back into, eliciting a small, surprised sound from him. But he doesn't move away, his hands tightening on her shoulders instead, as if to keep her there.

The mansion is stunning from the outside, lit as the grounds and exterior walls are, by magical means - a grand Muggle country estate, with sprawling gardens. Hermione stares at it, and all she can see is _evil_.

"Okay. I - let's go," she murmurs in a rush, voice choked, turning on her heel to face Malfoy before he can move, and then she is face to chest with him, her hand reaching up to grab at his shoulder as she unbalances on the jut of a tree root. The air quivers with their sharp intakes of breath as their bodies bump together, Malfoy's hand sliding to Hermione's upper back, steadying her as she lifts her eyes to his. She licks suddenly dry lips, staring up at him - hair shining faintly in the starlight, eyes dark and needy and full lips parting in anticipation - and then he hisses under his breath and turns away fast enough to nearly topple her.

"Come on." Malfoy finds her hand in the dark, their gloved fingers interlocking, and Hermione wants so badly to kiss him. She isn't sure what is making her heart pound faster - the fear, or the way Malfoy had looked at her before he'd shut his features down, and locked all expression away. "Every minute we waste out here is another in which they could find us."

It takes them nearly forty minutes of stumbling through the dark before Malfoy stops them - Hermione is flushed hot despite the cold and panting, her legs aching. She is unused to so much exercise after all the months locked up in Malfoy's suite. She lets go of Malfoy's hand, bending over and putting her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath as he moves away from her.

"We're outside the bounds." Malfoy flicks a _lumos_ charm to life, his face bleak in the blue-white light, gesturing at a nearby tree, larger than most of the others nearby. "We used that as the drop-off point for information and instructions."

_The drop-off point._

"if I write to you," Hermione says as the idea suddenly occurs to her, taking a step closer to him. "Will you write me back?" It is not him leaving with her, but it is something. It is a least some form of communication until Hermione can convince Kingsley to order Malfoy to leave, and join the Order's base of operations, and she will take it. It's better than nothing. Malfoy's drawn features seem to grow even more bleak, and he looks away.

"Yes," he says shortly, and...and Hermione doesn't believe him. She stares at him questioningly, emotion choking up in her throat.

"You're _lying_ to me," she says disbelievingly and too-loud, taking another step toward him, so that only one more pace separates her from reaching out a hand, and sliding her gloved fingers over the lines of his cheek and jaw. He keeps his face turned away from her, all contrasts of shadow and light, jaw clenching and unclenching, and Hermione's pulse races quicker. "Why are you lying to me, Malfoy?"

"This is the portkey that will take you to an Order safehouse," he says, lifting his eyes to hers then, ignoring her demands as he pulls a small cloth-wrapped object out of his inside cloak pocket. He takes her wrist and lifts her hand, pressing the wrapped portkey into it, and pressing her lax fingers closed around it. "As soon as you arrive the Order will be alerted, and send someone to investigate. It may not be someone who knows you, so make sure to keep your hands up so they can see you aren't a threat. All right?"

"Malfoy..." A horrible suspicion starts to stir in the back of Hermione's mind. "Malfoy, why are you lying to me?" She grabs his sleeve, _demanding_, because _no_, he wouldn't do that to her. He_ couldn't_. Malfoy detaches her grip on him gently but firmly, and then cups her face between his hands, his eyes fixed to her face, and her lips tremble. "Malfoy? _Answer me._"

"I love you," he says then like a confession, staring into her eyes with his own desperate and grief-filled, his thumbs stroking over her cheekbones. "I love you, Hermione."

Hermione's stomach drops, the breath rushing out of her - and then his mouth covers hers, and he is kissing her hard and insistent, like it is his last, and her heart wrenches and breaks.

Malfoy's lips, soft, greedy, pushing and moving with hers, and her stomach twists and _need_ clutches at he as she pushes back into him. The portkey is forgotten in her grip as she grabs handfuls of Malfoy's jersey at the shoulders, breathless, her tongue at the seam of his lips, and then he parts them and his tongue teases hot over hers, _demanding_. Her hat falls off to be lost on the snowy ground, her hair tumbling from its precarious bun as Malfoy fists his hand in it, holding her and licking into her mouth so that her knees go weak and her clit _throbs_. He is holding her up with one arm in the dark, and she feels like she is coming apart.

Then Malfoy rips himself away, stumbling back a pace or two, staring at her shocked and flushed by the light of his _lumos_, shoulders rising and falling jagged and fast as he pants for breath. "You need to go. _Now_."

She sways there, horror creeping cold into every part of her, sinking into her very bones as she stares at him with damp lips and tousled hair, _knowing_ with a chilling certainty that he has no plan. He was going to help her escape and then _die_. He has no intention, no _hope_ of ever living past tonight.

"Hermione..." he begs her, but she shakes her head. _No._

"You - you didn't frame Crabbe and Goyle Sr. at all, did you?" she says to him, the words coming out slow and dull. It feels like she's been numbed. Malfoy looks away, silent, and that is enough confirmation for her. Anger kindles hot in her chest, beginning to burn out the cold, and she clenches her fists at her sides.

'You planned to take the blame?" she asks him, quick now, tight and angry, and _horrified._ "That was your fucking _plan_ all along_,_ wasn't it? To take the blame and - and be tortured and _murdered?_" Her voice lifts in angry disbelief toward the end, because _why?_ Except that she already knows why. Malfoy thinks it would be justice, he thinks that he deserves it. He thinks that after the atrocities he has committed there can be no coming back, and he's wrong. He's a fucking _idiot_. It won't be easy, but he doesn't need to let what he did as a spy dictate who he is for the rest of his life. Especially if letting it dictate who he is means he commits suicide after telling her he _loves_ her. Does he not realise how _cruel_ that is?

"How could you _do_ this to me?" she demands of him, her breath coming in ragged gasps, tension radiating through her. "And - and how did you plan on doing it, Malfoy? Were you going to go back in there and let him find out, and torture you to death? Or - or were you just going to - to turn the Killing Curse on yourself, here, once I was gone?"

"Hermione..."

"I know you think you deserve to die, but doesn't my opinion mean _anything? I _don't think you deserve to die. You saved my life. You - you were tortured and you risked your own life to save mine! You - you may have done awful things, but they were for the right reasons. Sanctioned by the Order. You're not an evil person." She stares at him helplessly, begging him to believe her, to listen to reason. His eyes are hollow.

"I'm a monster, Granger," he tells her, his tone calm and even, and his words all the more dreadful because of it. "After everything I have done...how can I not be? I don't deserve to leave here. Not ever. Not after what I've done."

"Yes you do! You _do_ deserve it, Malfoy," she denies, insistent and desperate.

"_Why?_" he asks her, one word that breaks his expressionless calm apart leaving him trembling there in the cold dark, his jaw clenched and horror bleeding from his eyes.

"Because you did it all for the right reasons. Because you had to do it. Because you are a _good_ person, or - or you wouldn't feel this way now. And - and anyway, I love you," she adds softly, stepping toward him, and he swallows hard, looks away.

"You - you can't know how you feel. Not with everything that's -"

"Oh shut the _fuck_ up," Hermione snaps, the port key a fragile lump cradled in her gloved hand. "I _can _know how I feel, and what I feel is that I love you, Draco. I love you, and I am _not_ going to let you kill yourself." And then she opens her hand and drops the portkey, crushing it beneath her boot.

"No!" Draco cries the word desperately as he lurches forward toward her, his hand reaching out, horror printed on his pale, blue-light washed features. Without the portkey, Hermione knows he will have to disapparate with her, and once she has a hold on him, Hermione is not letting go and they both know it. She refuses to let him do this to himself. To let him give up, like a coward. He is better than that - he deserves better than that. He turns his furious, horrified gaze on Hermione, lips parting, but she speaks before he can find the words.

"If you want to save me, Draco Malfoy -" Hermione tells him very quietly and clearly, taking his hand and crossing the distance between them with a single step "- then you're going to have to save yourself too." She pauses, then, calmly: "Take me home now, Draco."

And she lets go of his hand, wrapping an arm around him and resting her cheek against his chest, heart in her throat as she waits for him do something. _Anything_. She waits. Malfoy is still as a statue, not even seeming to draw breath. The seconds tick by and Hermione's heart is slowly sinking, leaden - and then suddenly his arms close hard around her as his breath shudders out like a spell broken, his head dropping so that his lips press hard and brief against the crown of her head in a desperate kiss. And then the world twists and spins sickeningly around them, as he disapparates with her, held in the circle of his arms.


End file.
